Insights
by MagicSwede1965
Summary: Roarke gives Christian and Leslie a most unusual and generous gift. Follows 'One Last Hurrah'
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** _Just finished this story this evening and decided to put up the "teaser" chapter now. I had a great time writing this, so I hope you have as good a time reading it!_

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§ § § - October 6, 2009

The triplets were at school and Anastasia was down for her morning nap; so Leslie and Christian were taking advantage of the quiet. "Did you ever think we could indulge this much again?" he murmured with a barely-there chuckle as he pushed back the two panels of her favorite casual shirt. "I'd forgotten that having children in school could be so freeing."

Leslie smiled a little dreamily and shrugged out of the shirt altogether, brushing her lips across his. "I forgot what it was like. I wonder how much longer Anastasia will have morning naps...maybe at least through the next year?"

"We can hope for that," he breathed, kissing her.

Neither of them was really in the here-and-now when the phone rang; Christian was heavily occupied taking one of his rare turns nursing from Leslie, who heard the phone but had no particular wish to interrupt her husband. When he moved his hand lower, finding her with seemingly instinctive precision and beginning a gentle massage, she stopped hearing the ringing as well and lost herself in him.

Some fifteen minutes later, they were tangled in each other's arms when Christian stilled for a second or two, then muttered, "Did the phone ring earlier?"

Surprised, Leslie opened her eyes. "I thought you didn't hear it at all. It did, but we were in too good a place." She smirked at him, and he laughed softly.

"As well we didn't interrupt ourselves. Our moments together feel quite stolen as it is. Ah, my Rose, you're still as beautiful and sexy as ever." He kissed her again, and she could still taste her milk on his tongue, thin but sweet. She tucked her body in against his and let herself fall under his spell once more.

They were half asleep after their second round of lovemaking when the phone rang again, and Christian groaned. "We must be popular today. Perhaps I'd better go and see who it is. No, my darling, you stay here—if I recall correctly, our youngest will be awake soon as it is, so you rest a bit." He kissed her and rolled out of bed without bothering to pull on any clothing; she watched him with appreciation as he headed for their library to get the extension in there.

She lay daydreaming till he returned a few minutes later and settled on her side of the bed, gathering some of her hair into one hand. "Your father tells us he has a surprise for us," he said. "Something to help distract us from my niece's temporary absence from consciousness and the various readjustments we're making and will have to make."

"And from each other, no doubt," said Leslie through a sigh, making him laugh. "But that's interesting. Ten to one he didn't give you a hint as to what he meant."

"Of course not," said Christian, amused. "But from his tone of voice, it sounds like something quite big. You just rest a little, and I'll take a quick shower before we go."

Leslie grinned. "I'm not as tired as you think I am, my love. I'll just tuck my hair under a shower cap and join you. We indulged enough that we probably both ought to get cleaned up."

"The idea behind your resting while I shower was to keep us from giving in to temptation again," Christian mock-scolded, laughing. "But I'm not strong enough to keep you from joining me, so let things happen as they will. Hurry, my Rose, while the baby's still sleeping." He took her hand and tugged her into a sitting position, and they proceeded to wash each other in the shower, though not without indulging in another round of lovemaking after all.

Within the hour they were at the main house with Anastasia, who at somewhat more than five months old was a lively, alert baby; she had yet to sprout a tooth, although she was at an age where she could be expected to start. That was fine with Leslie, who had too many memories of being bitten while breast-feeding teething triplets five years before and was in no special hurry to repeat the experience. She was talking to the baby as Christian guided her into Roarke's study, where he sat at his desk writing on a legal pad. He looked up as they came in, and greeted them with a smile. "You must excuse me for not rising," he said apologetically. "I find my energy flagging more easily of late, so I try to get up only when it's truly necessary."

"Oh, Father, you know you don't have to get up just for us," Leslie said, settling into a leather chair and seating Anastasia on her lap so she could see her grandfather. "So I hear you have something for us to do."

"The word, my Rose, was 'surprise', in fact," Christian said comfortably, taking the other chair. "One would hope from the context that it's the good kind of surprise."

Roarke smiled broadly. "Rest assured, Christian, it is. This occurred to me some few weeks ago, but it is only now, when we've set many of the preparations for the upcoming changes in motion, that I've had a chance to act on it. I will have something fairly similar as a Christmas gift for you and the children, but this is solely for the two of you. It may be the only way for you to gain the insights into each other that I think would be beneficial to your marriage."

Christian and Leslie looked at each other, mystified. "What's this all about?" she asked, tilting her head to one side.

"Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba," Anastasia burbled, as if seconding her mother's question.

The adults laughed, and Roarke winked at the baby. "I'll leave your parents a few surprises for you as well, my dear granddaughter, so that perhaps you will be able to know me in the future," he said to her, making Christian and Leslie exchange glances again. "For the moment, however, as I said, this is for you two; and while you are busy with this, I'll have a chance to spend some time with Anastasia."

"What, precisely, is 'this'?" Christian asked.

Roarke put the pen aside and closed the cover of the pad he'd been writing on. "I've heard you share the occasional memories of each other's childhoods," he said, "usually after something has occurred in a fantasy and you find something in common with memories you have. And yet there are things neither of you has told the other—your recent reunion with your boyhood friends, Christian, comes to mind. I am not saying these were deliberate omissions; but I do believe you would both benefit from glimpses into each other's childhoods. So this is my gift to you. I've already prepared the time-travel room; it remains only for the two of you to provide the needed details so that I can complete the setup and then send you both on your way."

Christian leaned forward; Leslie sucked in a breath. "You're...letting us visit each other's childhoods?" she blurted.

Roarke smiled. "Each of you will have the opportunity to witness three scenes from different periods in your youth," he said. "You will know what your own memories are, but you won't know the other's till you visit them." He opened the notepad again, ripped out two blank sheets, and handed one to Christian and the other to Leslie. "Let me take the baby, Leslie, so you can do this. I want each of you to choose three memories from your childhoods—any three you wish—and write them down, but don't show them to each other. It will be your job, later, to explain to each other what recollections you'll be witnessing; for now, just write them down for me."

Leslie handed Anastasia to her father across the desk, and while he settled the baby in his lap, she gave Christian a pen, took one for herself and relaxed slowly back in her chair, casting through her memory. Christian's gaze had drifted out of focus and he was sitting with an elbow on the chair arm, loose fist providing a base for his head to rest on while he attempted to make three choices.

By the time they had finally written down the memories they wanted, Anastasia was deeply engrossed in minute study of the heavy silver chain that Roarke had worn around his right wrist for many years. Her parents' movements caught Roarke's attention and he looked up with a smile as they pushed their folded sheets across the desk at him. "Excellent, thank you both," he said.

"When do you plan to do this?" Christian asked. "I presume it won't be for some time, what with so many other things going on just now..."

He trailed off because Roarke, still smiling, was shaking his head. "Your first excursions into the past will be ready shortly after lunch today," he said. "Tomorrow you'll have the second ones, and Thursday you will have the final ones."

"Wow," said Leslie, astonished, and she and Christian traded yet another glance, this one a mix of excitement and a touch of trepidation. "Oh my goodness...this'll really be something, won't it? I hope you didn't write down anything traumatic, my love."

Christian grinned. "That all depends on what you consider traumatic. So exactly how is this to work, then, Mr. Roarke? Is this like the time-travel fantasies we've been involved in before, wherein we are actually part of the past and interacting with people there?"

"You will be in the scenes that your spouse remembers," Roarke said, speaking to them both, "but as an observer only; there will be no role-playing, nor any sort of influence on what you see. You will be among those participating in the memory, but you will be unseen and unheard, and no one will notice your presence. You will thus meet some people that you otherwise could never have done, and these minor adventures may just provide each of you with a little extra insight into each other's souls and psyches, and bring you all the closer to each other, through further understanding of the people and events that helped to shape you into who you are today."

Even Christian was speechless at this; his gaze slid to his wife, and they regarded each other with wonder. At the same time they started to smile with anticipation. "Well," said Christian at last, "this is very intriguing."

"Now I can hardly wait," Leslie admitted with a grin, and they all laughed.

‡ ‡ ‡

Roarke finished lunch before anyone else and excused himself to perform the final setup in the time-travel room, while Leslie catered to a demanding Anastasia and consented to feed her there at the table while she and Christian were finishing their own lunch. "Might as well keep her happy," Leslie said, resettling the nursing baby into the crook of her arm and regarding what remained on her plate. "At least she's nursing from the left side, so I can finish eating."

Christian chuckled. "I'm sure both she and Mr. Roarke will be far happier if she's fed, so that their time together will be of higher quality. I admit to wondering what he meant by leaving surprises for her to find in the future."

Leslie smiled and mused, "If I know Father, he's setting something up so that when Anastasia's old enough, he can leave her some memories so that she can get to know him, the same way we're about to get to know each other. It's the most beautiful gift I've ever heard of, and I just hope he won't mind if we bring the triplets in on it too. After all, they're still young enough that they'll remember Father, but those memories will eventually fade, the way yours of King Lukas did."

"Mmmm." Christian grew pensive for a moment. "I suppose I can safely admit that I didn't include a memory of _farfar_ on my list, but I wish I had...it would give me one last chance to see him, perhaps to enhance what little I can still recall."

"Maybe we can ask for a fourth memory each," Leslie said, considering it. "I've got at least one that I wish I could share with you that I didn't write down."

"We'll just have to see how generous Mr. Roarke's feeling." Christian grinned and took a last bite. "You finish with her, my Rose, and I'll look into it before it's too late."

Leslie finished a couple of minutes later and, carrying the still-nursing baby, tugged her shirt around Anastasia as best she could before walking back into the study. Christian was in the middle of explaining his idea to Roarke, who looked thoughtful. "So I thought perhaps this could be something special for each of us," he said, "and as you said, we would both meet people we never could otherwise."

Roarke regarded him for a moment, watched Leslie step down from the inner foyer, and smiled. "Well, it's not unreasonable, and I did say that," he conceded. "Very well. But it will necessitate a slight alteration in your lists." He went to the desk and picked up the folded sheets, handing one to each of them. "I want you to mark the memory you wish to guide your spouse through. Only one, however."

"What?" said Christian in confusion.

Leslie, better versed in her father's ways, stared at him with a new and somewhat stronger sense of unease. "You mean...otherwise I experience Christian's memories, and he experiences mine, alone?"

"Precisely," Roarke said with a nod. "The ones you intend to visit together will take place on Friday. But for the remaining ones, you will be unaccompanied; you'll have the chance to fully experience what your spouse remembers, without distractions or asides. It will also allow you to absorb the experiences with no outside influences."

Christian blew out a breath. "This is beginning to sound too much like a fantasy, with all its inherent risks and lessons to be imparted," he commented. "But very well..."

"Choose carefully," Roarke advised. "You will have only one opportunity to take each other through a memory, so think it through before you decide."

Leslie's smile was a little sad. "I don't have to think about it. I already know," she said softly, making a check mark beside one of her memory choices.

"Neither do I," murmured Christian, marking his own choice and folding the page again. "The very criteria made the choice easy. How close is she to finishing, my Rose?"

Leslie grinned at him. "Impatient, are we?" They all laughed. "Might as well relax, I think she's kind of hungry this time."

It was another ten minutes before Anastasia finally indicated she was finished, and of course Leslie had to burp her; but when this had happened, Christian grinned, looking boyish in his eagerness. "I hope you and Anastasia enjoy your time together, Mr. Roarke, though I suspect you may discover she spends the better part of it asleep."

"That's quite all right, Christian," Roarke assured him, chuckling, as Leslie tugged her shirt into place and then stood up to turn a drowsy Anastasia over to her father. "It still gives me the opportunity to spend time with her. Now, if you two will come with me..."

With a shared glance, Christian and Leslie trailed him to the time-travel room, which he unlocked before gesturing them in ahead of him. Anastasia nestled onto his shoulder and closed her eyes as he came in behind them and shut the door. "You will notice, first of all, that there are two doors," Roarke pointed out.

He was right; a doorway stood in each of the two farthest corners of the little room. "So we are to go simultaneously!" Christian said in surprise.

Roarke nodded. "Yes—and as I said, you each go alone. Friday will be the exception, but I'll give you more information on that when we get to that day. For now, what I want you to do is summarize the chosen memories for each other before I send you there. They will be presented in chronological order—the oldest recollection first. Leslie?"

She drew in a breath, going quickly back over her list in her head. "Okay. Well, my love, what you'll be seeing is a memory of something that happened to me in the middle of our move from Connecticut to California, when I was eight years old. I never told anyone about it—not my friends, not you, not even Father. Nobody else knows, and I guess at the time it was traumatic enough for me that I didn't want to talk about it. Then I sort of forgot, or at least it settled into the bottom of my brain and just buried itself in the muck down there." Christian let out a laugh, and she grinned back. "But I picked it because of what I did when it was actually happening. You'll recognize me by a long braid. For some reason I had a thing about curls for two or three years during elementary school, and I bugged Mom to put my hair in a braid every single day so my hair would stop being straight for a while. It took me till sixth grade to appreciate my natural look."

"Ah...I look forward to this, then," Christian said with a grin, sobering a bit when Roarke nodded at him to take his turn. "This first memory isn't something I'm very proud of, but you'll probably get a few laughs from it. You'll remember that Ernst, Pelle, Ivar and I made reference to putting a rotten fishtail into a teacher's desk when I was seven years old." At her nod, his smile grew a bit rueful. "That's what you'll see. All I ask is that you keep in mind that I was a little boy, playing a prank with his friends, and unheeding of the consequences or the repercussions. It happened in my primary school, which was in Stensbäcket, just northwest of Sundborg."

Leslie nodded. "I see. Before you go, my memory happened in a blank stretch of eastern Nebraska, which isn't much more than flat prairie if you're not in a city. It was on the fourth day of our cross-country trip."

"Thank you for that," said Christian. "That should help a bit." He pulled in a breath, glanced around the room and then focused on Roarke. "Who uses which door?"

"The one in the left corner will contain Leslie's memory," Roarke said, gesturing at it; he and Leslie both watched Christian approach it and pause there with his hand on the knob. The men then both looked at her, and she blinked, grinned sheepishly and went to the other door. Roarke took in the way they stared at each other and the hopeful smiles they traded before urging gently, "Go ahead, both of you. And I wish you the best."

Christian drew himself up straight, twisted the knob and pushed the door open, stepping right through; Leslie hesitated long enough to watch him go, then swallowed hard and opened her own door. Roarke waited till both doors had closed; then he smiled at Anastasia, who had already fallen asleep, and murmured, "Now the adventure begins."


	2. Chapter 2

§ § § - - August 29, 1973

Christian was slammed by a blast of light and heat as soon as he stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Squinting painfully, he shaded his eyes with one hand and tried to get some sense of his surroundings; after a minute or so, his eyes adjusted to whatever extent they were going to, and he realized that he was standing at the side of a stretch of two-lane highway that disappeared into the distance in both directions. All around him he saw tall golden prairie grasses undulating in the incessant wind; to his left was the only thing breaking the monotony of waving grass and endless blue sky—a gas station, advertising leaded for twenty-nine cents a gallon and unleaded for thirty-seven. _Well, that certifies that I'm in America,_ he thought humorously. _No one else uses gallons!_ The sigh of the wind was the only thing he could hear; the road was empty in both directions, and heat waves rolled off the pavement in the distance, reflecting the sky in wavering, ethereal mirages of ponds.

Then he caught a movement near the building and watched as a little girl emerged from the interior—a very familiar-looking little girl. She threw a furtive glance over one shoulder, then broke into a run across the blacktop and skirted around the spot where Christian stood staring at her. She wore a pink-and-white-striped sleeveless shirt and shorts in a matching solid pink, and her sneakers were scuffed navy-blue canvas with fraying laces. She wore white knee socks, and her red-gold braid fell halfway down her back. As he drank in the sight of his wife as an eight-year-old child, Leslie Hamilton came to a halt in the middle of the road and shot scowling glances in each direction. Christian followed suit, but the road was still empty.

Then Leslie got a wicked look about her and began to strike off down the road, trotting along as if she were heading somewhere with purpose. Christian fell in behind her, wishing someone were with her, for he was dying to know what she was thinking at this moment. _They say if you talk to yourself, you're crazy,_ he reflected, _but in this instance it would be enlightening._ He followed her along the road, wincing in the sun, wondering if Leslie remembered getting sunburned at all in this little adventure and if he himself would emerge from this with a sunburn of his own.

They walked for some ten minutes, with Christian's impatience and bewilderment growing apace, before a farmhouse abruptly emerged from the waving grass, as if conjured. Leslie seemed to brighten, and she started to run, veering to the side of the road and jumping a drainage ditch as an eighteen-wheeler rounded a bend in the distance and bore down on them. Christian barely managed to keep from stumbling into the ditch himself in his desperate mission to keep Leslie within sight.

The huge truck roared by, sounding off its air horn, as Christian plowed through the grass behind Leslie, only just keeping her in sight. Then he burst out of it, into a somewhat overgrown and browning lawn, and saw Leslie at the fence, tentatively petting a foal's nose. He stopped short and gaped, his mouth dropping open; he certainly hadn't expected this.

Then he realized he could hear Leslie talking, and ventured a couple of hesitant steps before remembering that Roarke had said he couldn't be seen or heard by anyone around him. He drew up beside Leslie and leaned on the fence, watching her drift her palm with great care along a white blaze on the brown foal's muzzle. "Know what I wish?" she asked the foal. "I wish you were a little bit bigger...and then you and I could just ride away someplace. Someplace my stupid dumb dad would never find me."

He didn't recognize the child's voice that came from her mouth; there was no sign at all of the woman's voice that had been one of the many things that had made him fall so much in love with her. But he drank in the sound of it anyway, because it was still his Leslie, despite her youth and her extreme dissimilarity to his wife as he knew her.

"But then I guess I'd start missing Mom," young Leslie admitted to the foal at that point, pulling Christian back to the moment. Wisps that had pulled free from her braid whipped in the constant wind; a shadow engulfed them, and both he and the little girl looked up. At some point, while they had been trekking along this lonely Nebraska road, a storm front had moved in, and the sky was being rapidly overtaken by a heavy gray shelf cloud with a rolled-edge front. Christian's eyes widened in amazed anticipation; he had seen such clouds on television documentaries about storms as he was growing up, but had never thought to experience one firsthand. _"Herregud,"_ he said aloud.

"Oh no," exclaimed Leslie nervously from behind him, and he turned to see her blue eyes wide with alarm. "How come there had to be a storm?"

"Young lady, what are you doing out here?" someone called out then, and both Christian and Leslie turned toward the nearby house. A woman clad in a plaid work shirt and worn jeans whose cuffs were folded up at the ankles approached them. "You shouldn't be out here, you know. There's a weather alert out." She got close enough then to pause and eye the girl with puzzlement. "Are you from around here? I don't recognize you."

Leslie shook her head and hunched her shoulders. "No...I'm from Connecticut. I'm moving to California with my parents and my twin sisters...or I was, except I...I mean, they left me by accident. I was still in the bathroom at the gas station up the road from here, and they left without me."

The woman looked shocked at first, then disbelieving. "Are you sure?"

Leslie nodded, beginning to look frightened. "You can call the station. Honest."

"I think I'll just do that," the woman said with a decisive nod. "You come with me, young lady. What's your name?" She took the girl's hand as she spoke, leading her toward the house; Christian, with one eye on the sky, trailed them like a ghost.

"Leslie Hamilton," the child said. "I'm eight."

The woman nodded and brought her up onto a wraparound porch, then into the house; Christian just managed to slip inside before the screen door banged closed. She sat Leslie down on an overstuffed chair near the door, and Christian loitered beside the girl, taking the chance to study her while the woman made a phone call. He could see that the shape of Leslie's face had remained the same; her hair color had never changed, and those blue eyes were the same ones he found so entrancing now. He noticed for the first time that she was surprisingly thin; she wasn't being starved, but she seemed to be all knees and elbows, huddled within the clothing that was at least a size too large for her. Christian wanted nothing more than to kneel beside the chair and reassure Leslie that better things were in her future, and that she needed only to be patient and wait for them.

The woman hung up and regarded Leslie with a much kindlier mien. "Well, the gas-station attendant said you're right, you got left by mistake." She sighed. "I wonder what your parents must have been thinking? How long ago did they leave?"

Leslie hunched her shoulders even farther, folding her hands together in her lap; her feet dangled several inches off the floor, and she turned them inward, toes pointing toward each other. "I don't know, kind of a long time. But I didn't want to sit in that gas station and wait around for them all day. I...I saw this house when we came off the highway to get gas, and I saw the horses in the yard...especially the little one. When I got left, I decided I wanted to come and see it." Her face grew soft with wonder and she seemed to forget where she was; Christian's heart melted. "I was never that close to a real live horse before."

The woman smiled, as if perhaps she remembered being that young and filled with discovery once upon a time. "That's our foal, Lightning," she said, sitting in a nearby chair. "Born just this spring." As if reacting to the foal's name, there was a long, low grumble from outside, and Christian's attention was drawn to the large picture window that looked out over the rain-starved lawn, the sun-bleached pavement, and the ever-rippling prairie grass. He went to the window, but couldn't see much because of the porch roof; still, there seemed to be a change in the character of the wind. He turned in time to see that Leslie was staring apprehensively through the window as well, and the woman was crossing the room to a fireplace, upon whose mantel sat an old-fashioned radio that Christian guessed must date from the thirties or forties. She clicked it on and fiddled with the tuning knob till she got a tense male voice reporting current weather conditions.

"Tornado watch," she muttered, shaking her head. "Little late in the season, but you never know with the weather these days. It's risky...you'd better stay here till your parents get back to pick you up."

"A tornado?" Leslie repeated in high-pitched horror. "But...but what'll happen to poor Lightning if there's a tornado?"

The woman smiled at her. "Animals are smarter than people a lot of the time," she said. "They can take care of themselves. We'll keep an eye on this weather, but you'll have to be ready to run out to the storm cellar with me." She took in Leslie's blank, wide-eyed look and shook her head again. "Where are you from again?"

"Connecticut," Leslie squeaked.

"Then you wouldn't know about tornadoes. Tell you what, if something does happen, just do as I say and you'll be all right. I'm not going out in that weather even to take you back to the gas station. It's too risky right now."

At that moment Christian noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and twisted his head to follow it; a dusty white station wagon roared past the house as he watched, and Leslie clearly saw it too, for she blurted, "That was our car! They came back!"

"The gas station'll send them here," the woman told her. "You just sit tight."

She was right; a few minutes later the car returned, pulling onto the parched grass and discharging a slender woman with the same hair as Leslie. She turned to say something to someone in the car, then rushed across the yard; Leslie leaped from her chair and plastered herself against the screen door. Christian watched avidly as the woman, her short straight hair standing almost horizontal in the freshening wind, jumped the steps onto the porch, yanked the screen door open and hugged Leslie hard. "Thank goodness! I've never been so terrified in my life!" she cried, and Christian recognized Shannon Hamilton's voice from the cassette tape they had played for the triplets not so long ago.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Leslie blurted, her voice muffled in her mother's shoulder.

"Honey, it's not your fault," Shannon told her. "Your father was in too much of a hurry and didn't bother to check and make sure we were all in the car." She lifted her gaze and seemed to look straight at Christian, who flinched backward with surprise before realizing that the woman of the house had come up behind him. "I really appreciate your keeping my daughter like this. I'm sorry to put you to so much trouble."

"She wasn't any trouble at all," the woman assured her. "But you know, I think you and your family need to stay put for now. There's a tornado watch out, and if one happens to come along, I'd hate to hear about your getting caught up in it and killed."

Shannon tossed an uncertain look over her shoulder toward the car, which sat half on and half off the road with all its windows rolled down. Christian squinted in the same direction, trying to make out the figures inside; he assumed the driver was Michael Hamilton, but the car was too far from the house for him to make out details.

"I think you're right," Shannon said, and waved at the car. The back door promptly flew open and two more girls spilled out, racing across the yard as the first wind-driven raindrops flew past on the wild breeze. As they reached the porch, the driver got out, gave the car door a slam that sounded like a gunshot, and stalked across the yard, paying no heed to the rain. Christian took in the faces of Leslie's parents and sisters: Kelly and Kristy, whom he couldn't tell apart to save his life, were loitering on the porch, one on either side of Shannon, while Michael Hamilton made it only halfway across the lawn before the skies opened up and the grass across the road was obscured by the rain. Michael cursed loudly and fluidly, and ran back for the car, flinging himself inside and frantically rolling up windows. The twins both burst into frenetic giggles, and Leslie smirked.

"Girls," Shannon said, but with little heat.

"Dad got all wet," one of the twins chortled delightedly. "That was funny!"

The woman behind Christian cleared her throat. "Sorry about that. Why don't you come inside and I'll make some coffee. I might have some juice for your girls."

"Can we stay, Mommy?" a twin asked.

"I don't know, Kristy," Shannon demurred. "Dad wants to make Grand Island before we stop for the day..."

"You're another fifty miles from Grand Island," the woman broke in. "You'd better stay put. There's enough daylight left to make the trip, but if you get caught in this weather, you'll be sorry."

At that precise second, the entire world seemed to light up, as if they were all standing on the inside of a giant exploding firework; there was a terrifying crack, which was followed a tenth of a second later by a deafening explosion. Leslie, Kristy and Kelly all screamed, long and hard; Shannon emitted a shriek of her own and tried to gather the girls into her arms all at once. Even Christian flung his arms over his head and half crouched, freezing in that position for a few seconds till the worst of the thunder had rolled away; then he blinked and shook his head, deeply impressed. No storm he had ever witnessed rolling off the North Sea onto the _jordisk_ coast could have prepared him for this.

The homeowner looked shocked herself. "That must have been right overhead," she said in a shaky voice. "Now I insist you come inside."

"We will," Shannon agreed immediately, visibly trembling as she herded her three terrified daughters inside. Kristy was crying; Kelly—the one Christian remembered being told was the fearless one of the trio—was wiping away tears as well, trying to look brave but not making much of a job of it. Leslie shivered in her mother's embrace as Shannon added, "If my foolish husband wants to stay out in the car in this, then let him."

Over the roaring of the rain on the roof, there was the faint whinny of a horse; Leslie stopped short, her eyes popped, and she wailed, "Lightning!"

"Yes, honey, it was," Shannon agreed.

"No, not lightning," Leslie protested, turning pleading eyes to the homeowner. "Lightning! I hope he didn't get hit!"

"Our foal, Mrs. Hamilton," the homeowner explained with a little smile. "Your Leslie came over to visit him before all this weather got in. I think she made a new friend."

Shannon smoothed Leslie's braid. "I'm sure he's just fine, honey. Don't worry."

Christian saw the fear in Leslie's eyes and found himself making a wish—and then realizing there was a way he could fulfill it. Unseen by anyone else, he ducked through the door that Shannon was still holding open and made his way to the end of the porch, trying to see through the curtain of rain. It took him a minute, but he managed to make out several equine shapes, like half-invisible wraiths, milling around in rapid twists and turns. One of them was notably smaller than the rest, rearing onto its hind legs over and over again and shrieking in much the same way Leslie and her sisters had done during the lightning blast moments before. Christian felt compelled to yell, "It's all right, Lightning, it's all right. You're going to be fine."

"I can't see Lightning," he heard Leslie cry out from behind, and turned to find her clinging to the screen door, trying to see through the rain herself. "I can't see him!"

The homeowner came out beside her and knelt down to reassure her. "Remember what I said? Animals are smarter than people. Those horses are just fine, I promise."

"I hope so," Leslie said fearfully, staring into the rain. "Oh, I hope so."

The world around Christian seemed abruptly to begin melting, as if it were a painting being washed away in the torrential rain; then all sight and sound ceased, and a door appeared right in front of him. Jolted, he grabbed the knob, opened the door and emerged into the time-travel room. There was a chair nearby, and he sank into it, sighing.


	3. Chapter 3

§ § § - October 5, 1965

Leslie wasn't sure what she had expected when she pushed the door shut behind her, but she was a little surprised to find herself standing in a classroom. It looked remarkably like all the elementary-school classrooms she remembered from her early years, with desks in neat rows, a poster of the alphabet mounted on a bulletin board, a message written in blue chalk on the blackboard, a flag hanging from a wall-mounted pole. But the alphabet contained three extra letters; the message was in another language; and the flag was butter yellow with a pale-blue cross and a red crown silhouette smack at the intersection of the cross' two bars. She was definitely in Lilla Jordsö. The room was mostly empty but for a woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late thirties shuffling through a stack of papers and three or four children sitting in their desks, one of them still wearing a dripping rain hat. Leslie peered out the window behind her and realized it was pouring; the day was dank and gloomy, and it appeared to have been raining hard for some time, as the playground outside the window was studded with puddles.

She was reading the _jordiska_ message on the blackboard, which said, _Today is the 5_ _th_ _of October. It is raining and cold. Yesterday was National Day for Lilla Jordsö,_ when she heard children's voices nattering outside the hallway and a crowd of kids burst in, most of them shaking water off raincoats, hats or umbrellas. They were all babbling excitedly, and Leslie found herself trying to fend off creeping xenophobia; she picked up the odd word here and there, but the fact that they were all chattering in easy, fluent _jordiska_ gave her a sense of isolation for some absurd reason. _I wish I'd asked Father about that translation trick he uses for fantasies where someone goes someplace where they don't speak English!_ She supposed he probably hadn't bothered because she was fairly proficient with _jordiska_ by now; but the nattering voices were carrying on much too rapidly for her to follow.

A few boys detached themselves from the crowd at the door while the teacher got to her feet and began trying to impart order. They pulled off rain hats and, with one exception, slung them onto the floor, unbuttoning raincoats, looking at one another with secretive grins. One of them, the pale-blond boy, carried a paper bag; another was discernibly chubbier than the others and had ash-blond hair that stuck up in spikes along the top of his head. The third had hair the color of wet sand hanging into his eyes and kept shooting furtive glances at the teacher.

But it was the fourth boy, the dark-haired one, on whom Leslie's eyes fastened themselves. _Oh, my love, you don't change much!_ Seven-year-old Christian Enstad had the same facial features, rounded and softened but still attractive, hinting strongly at the heartthrob status he'd attain in less than ten years. He nudged the boy whose hair was sticking up and murmured something to him; the latter boy, who Leslie realized had to be Ernst Wennergren, shook his head violently, whipping his hair around and causing the tufts on top to wiggle back and forth. Christian snickered and turned to the boy with the paper bag, who raised said bag just enough so that the others could see it. _That has to be that troublemaker Ivar Claesson,_ Leslie deduced, which meant the other boy was Pelle Fågelsang. She remembered Christian blaming Ivar for bringing in the fishtail and realized with a grin that he hadn't been kidding. Even as she stood there staring at them, the two boys grinned conspiratorially at each other before Ernst wormed his way around them and headed for his desk, as if trying to distance himself from all the trouble he knew his friends were about to get into.

Christian—the only one who hadn't tossed his rain hat onto the floor—shook out the hat now, sending water droplets flying across the room. He shrugged off his raincoat, going to a desk and hanging the coat over the back of the chair while Leslie watched, unable to take her eyes off him. She could see that he was much the same mischievous little boy she remembered watching in the video of his father's coronation, just a little taller and with a touch more leanness in his face. She couldn't resist rounding the desks and pausing a couple of feet or so away so she could feast her eyes on this young incarnation of her husband.

Christian spoke in _jordiska_ , of course, but fortunately his speech was clear enough that she understood it. "Come on, get in your desks before she notices," he urged.

Ivar sauntered over with the paper bag. "She's busy with those other kids," he said. "It's gonna work, don't worry. Boy, I can't wait to see her face."

"You're gonna really get it," piped up Ernst from the desk directly behind Christian's.

"Scaredy-cat," Ivar taunted.

"Hey, Pelle, you remember what to do, right?" Christian prompted.

Pelle sighed. "You already told me fifty times, Christian," he said in a weary voice. "I throw up and she takes me to the nurse, and Ivar sneaks the fishtail in her desk."

"Hey," Ivar protested then, "I'm not doing it. I did my part already—I brought the fishtail." He brandished the paper bag at Pelle, who pinched his nose shut and backed off a few steps. "Somebody else has to put it in the desk."

"Not me," Ernst said immediately.

"I'm throwing up," Pelle put in.

Ivar grinned slyly at Christian. "That means you gotta do it."

Leslie watched Christian shrug. "Okay." He slid into his desk with an utterly unconcerned air about him, and she rolled her eyes and grinned reluctantly. She remembered Christian mentioning that their teacher had never found out who left the tail in her desk, but that didn't make the whole thing any less risky. "You have no idea how lucky you are that you never got caught, Christian Enstad," she scolded the oblivious young prince, tossing Ivar a glance as a thought crossed her mind. "Then again, you're probably even luckier that Claesson there didn't end up double-crossing you and tattling on you."

Just then Ernst asked, "Are you really gonna throw up, Pelle?"

Pelle shrugged. "I have to. If it wasn't real, it wouldn't work."

"How'll you do it?" Christian wanted to know. Leslie couldn't resist a delighted smile at his little-boy voice, so utterly unlike his current alto-baritone.

Before Pelle could tell him, the teacher succeeded at last in getting the rest of the class to disperse to their seats; she peered at Ivar and gave him a curt order to sit down, and Pelle hastily took his own desk before she could tell him the same thing. Leslie, standing in front of the class like a guest speaker, had to remind herself that no one here could see or hear her; she felt on display, despite that no one was even looking in her direction. The last few kids took their seats; the teacher then came up to stand a few feet to Leslie's left and gestured at a photograph on the wall that Leslie had somehow missed when she first scanned the room. It was of Christian's parents, looking much younger in a black-and-white portrait. "Rise and bow or curtsy in honor of King Arnulf and Queen Susanna," the teacher ordered.

Leslie burst into surprised laughter when every child in the room except Christian got up and executed the requested movement. Automatically she looked at the teacher, but either the woman didn't notice Christian's lack of obeisance, or understood the likely reason for it. She planned to ask her husband about it when this memory had run its course. Meantime, she wanted to know what this teacher was like that had brought on enough dislike on the part of Christian and his friends to play this prank on her.

The teacher waited till the children had resumed their seats, then cleared her throat and announced in businesslike tones, "We will now have a test: addition for the girls, spelling for the boys." Groans rose from the class, and Leslie peered in amazement at the teacher; she knew full well that _jordisk primaskolan_ began at the age of seven, which would make this the equivalent of first grade. Trying to figure out whether it was the era or the local practice that was responsible for what was essentially a pop quiz, she missed a few seconds of the children's activities and had to pull herself back to the moment—just in time to see Pelle Fågelsang withdraw something from his shirt pocket and cup it in one hand, eyeing the teacher as furtively as he could.

The teacher turned her back on the class to retrieve a stack of papers from her desktop, and Pelle reached across the aisle and poked Christian, who sat at his left. The movement also caught the attention of Ernst and Ivar, as well as five or six other kids who sat nearby; Pelle grinned, pointed at his cupped hand, then clapped it over his mouth and began to chew. Almost instantly he made a series of grotesque faces; Ivar began snickering, Christian grinned widely, and Ernst's jaw dropped.

The teacher began to walk the rows, placing a stapled set of papers on each desk from one of two stacks, according to whether the child in question was a boy or a girl. Leslie saw Christian make an urgent _hurry up_ pantomime at Pelle, who squeezed his eyes closed, made a last few ferocious chewing motions and then swallowed hard, with a fierce grimace. He stuck out his tongue with disgust, then froze in his chair, slammed both hands over his mouth and seemed to go pale. Christian's grin faded noticeably and he leaned away from Pelle; Leslie snickered at his reaction.

Then Pelle half stood up, lurched over the top of his desk and vomited with enough noise and force to rivet everyone in the room, including the teacher. Ernst and Christian gaped at him in amazement; even Ivar looked impressed. The teacher dropped the rest of the test papers and rushed to Pelle's assistance. "Calm down, Fågelsang, we're going to see the school nurse," she said. Helping Pelle out of his desk, she swept a warning look across the rest of the class. "You are expected to behave while we're gone," she informed them. "Kollman, you will pass out the rest of the tests—math for the girls, spelling for the boys." A girl with waist-length blonde braids nodded and got to her feet, gathering up the dropped papers and beginning to pass them out. Christian and Ivar exchanged an incredulous glance, as if they had thought that Pelle's being sick would somehow have excused the entire class from the pop quiz.

Pelle, clutching his stomach, submitted to the teacher's less-than-gentle prodding toward the door, but managed to shoot a glance over one shoulder in his friends' direction before he was removed from their view. It took only a few seconds for complaints to rise from the children about the tests; the girl with the braids shrugged helplessly and continued to dole them out. Ivar sneered at her when she got to the front of the second row, where Pelle had been sitting. "Inger Kollman, teacher's pet," he singsonged.

"I hope you fail the test, Ivar Claesson," the girl shot back, and Leslie snickered, thinking, _Good for you!_ The girl's name sounded familiar and she tried to figure out why, but had to give up when it wouldn't come to her.

Inger dropped a spelling test on Christian's desk and worked her way down the row he sat in; Ernst dodged the paper that landed on his desktop, then asked, "Where's the fishtail? Now that _fru_ Hedefalk's gone..."

Ivar grinned and pulled the paper bag out from under his chair, thrusting it at Christian. "Your turn, Enstad," he said, as if in challenge.

Even at seven years of age, Leslie discovered, Christian had already been capable of donning that cool, controlled mien that came so easily to him in public. Without a word, with no more than a steady stare and the slightest of smiles at Ivar, Christian accepted the bag and got up, skirting the puddle of vomit in front of Pelle's desk with some care before circling around the teacher's desk and peering across the back of it. After a minute he chose a drawer, pulled it as far open as he could, sucked in a deep breath and held it, opened the bag, then upended it over the open drawer. Something fell out and landed with a muted thud in the drawer. Christian slammed it shut and backpedaled from the desk, wadding up the bag and throwing it into the garbage can beside the door. Only then did he release his breath in an explosive gust and return to his desk. Leslie shook her head; he had never bothered to check to see if anyone was watching. Not that it seemed to matter, for the class had long since descended far enough into disorder that only a few children, mostly girls, were actually trying to work on the test. Inger Kollman had just handed out the last one; as she crossed along the front row of desks, Ivar reached out and gave one of her braids a hard yank. No shrinking violet after all, Inger retaliated with a good whack across the top of Ivar's head that actually made him squawk, eliciting laughter from Christian and Ernst, the latter of whom was another of those laboring over the test.

Ivar got up and appointed himself lookout beside the door, while Christian picked up his test and looked it over before shrugging unconcernedly and beginning to answer the questions. After he'd gotten through three or four of them, Ivar yelled, "Someone's coming!" and every kid in the room scrambled back to his or her desk, bending heads over test papers. Ivar alone remained where he was, then snickered loudly and taunted, "Fooled ya...it's only the janitor."

An older man entered the room with a cart full of cleaning supplies while the class looked up; some kids glared at Ivar or called him names, while many others watched the janitor start to mop up the mess Pelle had left behind. Christian, who had one of the best views in the room, merely made a face and concentrated harder on his test; Leslie grinned.

The janitor was gone before Ivar gave warning that someone was coming, by which time most of the students had gone back to their horseplay. Leslie had watched Christian throughout; he'd dutifully answered every test question before turning to Ernst and trying to start a conversation. Ernst was having some trouble, so Christian lent assistance, warming Leslie. While they were occupied, Leslie had gone over to Christian's desk and checked the pages he'd completed; of course, all the spelling words were in _jordiska_ , but her husband had taught her well enough that she knew all of Christian's answers were correct. "Incorrigible little rogue," she murmured affectionately, watching the seven-year-old prince point out an error on Ernst's test paper.

"Teacher's coming," Ivar sang out.

"You better not be fooling, Claesson," someone yelled from the back of the room.

Ivar smirked, sprinting to his desk. "Just watch!"

Sure enough, _fru_ Hedefalk entered the room with Pelle, who still looked a little pale but seemed to be in better spirits. The teacher gestured Pelle to his desk, then took in the entire class. "If anyone has finished his or her test...which I doubt," she muttered, "please bring it to my desk immediately." So saying, she took her chair behind said desk, and Leslie saw that Ivar, Christian, Pelle and Ernst were all peering at her as surreptitiously as they were capable of at that age, clearly waiting for her reaction.

A few girls and a couple of boys got to their feet to take their tests to the desk; to Leslie's surprise, Christian was one of these, taking Ernst's paper up with him. He let some of the other kids precede him there and reached the desk just as the girl nearest _fru_ Hedefalk's chair sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "Something smells nasty," the girl said.

"Yeah," said another girl. "Ewwww." Leslie giggled; apparently the expression was the same in _jordiska_ as in English. As if compelled, she went to the desk to stand behind Christian; she too could detect a whiff of rotten fish.

 _Fru_ Hedefalk clearly noticed it too, for she stilled and frowned, then tugged open the desk drawer in front of her. Shrieks went up and every child at the desk backed away at sight of the half-rotted fishtail; _fru_ Hedefalk recoiled and instinctively slammed the drawer. "Who is responsible for this?" she shrilled. "I want an answer immediately!"

All over the room children denied knowledge of the prankster's identity; Christian, having contributed his own false denial, tossed the test papers onto the desk and retreated to his own, holding his nose. Ivar burst into helpless giggles when he saw Christian's reaction, and that attracted _fru_ Hedefalk's attention. _"Claesson!"_ she thundered.

Ivar bolted upright in his chair. "What?" he blurted out.

"You will address me as _fru_ Hedefalk!" the teacher ordered, enraged. "And there's no doubt in my mind that you're the one who must have done this! All year long you've been responsible for countless disruptions. Just wait till I speak with your parents!"

"But I—" Ivar began.

"He had a paper bag with something really smelly in it, _fru_ Hedefalk," chimed in Inger Kollman from the middle of the first row. "I saw it!"

"But I didn't put it in the desk!" howled Ivar in disbelief. Strictly speaking, it was the truth, but Leslie was amazed to see that no one in the class seemed willing to turn in Christian as the culprit. Christian himself was gaping at Ivar, along with Pelle and Ernst.

"You did so," volunteered a boy, the same one in the back who had warned Ivar not to try to fool them with a false warning of the teacher's approach. Leslie shook her head in laughing disbelief as the boy announced, "I saw him go up front and dump out a paper bag in your desk, _fru_ Hedefalk."

"Yeah," several girls chorused, "he did it! I saw him!"

Ivar gawked in shock at each child as more and more support for his culpability cropped up; Christian, looking shocked for an entirely different reason, turned to Pelle, who could only shrug. Behind Christian, Ernst started giggling, trying to hide it with a hand over his mouth. In the end _fru_ Hedefalk quieted the class, gave Ivar five extra assignments in several different subjects, and vowed to call the senior Claessons about their son's shenanigans before stalking out of the room, presumably to get hold of the janitor.

"But Christian did it!" Ivar finally shouted, trying to make himself heard above the inevitable chatter that arose as soon as the teacher had left. _"He_ put it there, not me!"

"It was you, you dirty old bug," snapped Inger Kollman, and was immediately seconded by a crowd of girls all over the room.

Even a few boys agreed with her. Someone actually warned, "You're not supposed to get the prince in trouble, or you'll go to the dungeon!" That made Leslie collapse against the wall with laughter. She caught a glimpse of the astonishment on Christian's face and found herself laughing even harder; in fact she was so consumed that she barely noticed when the scene faded around her and a door appeared from thin air.

She had to pull herself together to some extent before she could open the door; in the other corner of the time-travel room sat Christian, whose expression seemed faraway. He came alert, though, as soon as she emerged, and arose in surprise. "What's so funny?"

"That undeserved happy ending you got back in sixty-five," Leslie said, still giggling. "Oh, my love, now I think I know why you wanted me to see that. It was hilarious!"

Christian grinned, though he was still mildly puzzled. "How much did you see?"

"I saw enough to find out that your teacher put all the blame on Ivar Claesson and you got off scot-free," she said merrily. "What a farce. It's a wonder the rest of the class didn't rat you out...although you probably deserved it."

"Rat me out?" Christian echoed, brows shooting skyward.

"Tattle," Leslie explained, giggling. "Tell her who really did it."

"Ah." Laughing himself now, Christian shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged in a slightly self-conscious motion. "I'm sure I did deserve it, but Ivar had already become known as the class troublemaker after only a bit more than two months in school, and it was probably inevitable that he ended up taking the blame for the entire scheme. I suppose I should have said something, but I knew it would have gotten back to my parents. I knew Father's temper all too well already, and I wasn't willing to face it. Pelle had no intention of admitting to being in on it either, so we let Ivar take the fall all alone."

"Shame on you," Leslie teased. "But it was still funny. Some questions, though. First of all, what on earth did Pelle eat that made him throw up like that?"

"We asked him that after school that day," Christian remembered, grinning. "He told us that some cousin of his had brought back a box of chocolate-covered ants from a visit to the US, and he thought that stood a good chance of making him sick—but, just to be truly certain, he said he poked a hole in the top of the chocolate he brought with him and poured in a little of the cod-liver oil he claimed his mother was always trying to feed him and his little brother. As you obviously saw, it worked perfectly."

"Sure did," Leslie agreed, shaking her head with amusement. "Next, there was a girl named Inger Kollman who got appointed to pass out the tests..."

Christian nodded, breaking in, "She was the one whose braids Ivar was always trying to tie together. Occasionally Pelle or I tried to do it too, but mostly it was Ivar."

"That's right, I remember Ivar saying something about it when you and he had that confrontation last year. And also...right at the beginning, when class started, your teacher told everyone to get up and bow or curtsy as a gesture of respect to a portrait of your parents on the wall." She saw Christian's expression change and giggled again. "They did—all but you. How come you were exempt?"

This time it was Christian who burst out laughing. "To tell the truth, I'd almost forgotten! But you're right—this was something required in every school in Lilla Jordsö for well over a century and a half. It may interest you to learn that Arnulf, Carl Johan, Anna-Laura and I were the very first royal children who were sent to schools outside the castle, rather than being educated at home by tutors as my father and all the foregoing generations had been. I seem to recall that Arnulf bowed to the portrait like all his classmates; I expect that Carl Johan and Anna-Laura paid their respects as well, though I don't know for certain. However, I saw no reason to make such obeisance to my own parents. _Fru_ Hedefalk spent three weeks demanding that I do it, in vain, before she sent me home with a note which I gave Mother. I can still remember how she laughed when she realized I was rebelling. She wrote a response on the note, excusing me from having to bow, and sent it back with me; and that was the last time _fru_ Hedefalk—or any teacher, for that matter—objected to my remaining seated."

"Do they still do that?" Leslie asked, laughing with him.

"No, it died out sometime during the 70s. I think I was about to finish _primaskolan_ at the time, and I remember being relieved for it because the fact that it was being done at all, and that I was exempt, merely called unwanted attention to me." He let out a last chuckle and shook his head. "I'm happy to see you found it so amusing, my Rose. But then there was your memory. Eight years old, in a strange place you'd never been to before and would never see again, and you still went exploring? You were intrepid!"

"Well, I didn't really see it that way," Leslie admitted. "It was because I was still so mad at Michael for wanting to take us away from _mormor_ 's grave so we couldn't visit her and leave flowers for her. I'd seen that little foal when we stopped off for gas, and when I realized they'd left without me, I decided it was my only chance to see what it felt like to be right up close to a real live horse, and whether their noses were really as soft as I'd always heard." She sighed. "I just wish I knew what happened to the poor little guy. When that lightning bombed the place..."

"I looked," Christian said softly. "I couldn't bear that terrified look on your face, so I went to the end of the porch and tried to find out. I could just see all the horses rearing and screaming in their paddock—including your foal. He was all right, my Leslie Rose, I promise you. His owner was correct about that much."

She brightened with amazement and hugged him. "Oh, my love, thank you for doing that! By the time we left that house, all the horses had run off somewhere else, and I never did see that foal again. I wondered for years what had happened to him. Thank you."

Christian hugged her close and stroked her hair a few times. "Quite enlightening, this, don't you think? I look forward to the rest."

Leslie grinned. "Me too. I can hardly wait."


	4. Chapter 4

§ § § - - October 7, 2009

Anastasia was this time napping in Leslie's old room when Roarke took Christian and Leslie to the time-travel room for their second excursions. "Go ahead and summarize for each other, as you did yesterday," he prompted.

Christian chuckled. "I remember the day when I horrified my sister by accidentally misnaming our original ancestor. I was twelve, and as I recall, I created quite the little stir. I think you'll enjoy this, my Rose. What do you have for me?"

"I know it sounds mundane," she said, "but you're going to accompany me and Mom and the twins on a major grocery-shopping trip. You'll learn a little more about the way Michael tried to dictate our lives even when he wasn't actually with us, and about the way the twins and I tended to interact...and there's a surprise for you at checkout, so try to be patient. I was twelve too, and it was in the Susanville Safeway—that's a grocery-store chain. We might all look familiar because it wasn't too long after the four of us had that family portrait done together."

Roarke chuckled at Christian's slightly dubious look. "Leslie has a special reason for presenting you with this memory," he assured the prince. "If you're both ready, you can begin now." He gestured to the two doors, and this time Christian and Leslie paused only long enough for a quick kiss before both disappearing through them.

§ § § -July 30, 1970

Leslie instantly recognized herself to be in the royal dining room, which apparently hadn't changed in some four decades at least. A quick scan around the table revealed the entire royal family as it had existed at the time: King Arnulf I, known as Ulf within the family; Queen Susanna; the future Arnulf II, sitting beside his brand-new wife, Kristina; Carl Johan, aged twenty; seventeen-year-old Anna-Laura; and twelve-year-old Christian.

She was quite surprised at sight of Carl Johan; he was handsome in a more rugged way than Christian, with a lean face that currently sported the shadow of an impending beard and a long Roman nose. He had the same cleanly sculpted jaw and the same straight, glossy chestnut-brown hair, but his build was a bit more muscular; she could see the faint bulges of biceps under Carl Johan's sweater sleeves. _Wonder where he got those?_ she mused. She supposed it must have to do with all the landscaping he did around the castle; it was little wonder he was considered the family "looker" at this point in their history.

Her gaze shifted to Christian, who was already showing signs of the stunning good looks he'd soon acquire; he already had that elegant aquiline nose, and the grin he flashed at his older brother was a near-perfect replica of its current self. They were listening to Anna-Laura—a pretty teenager with long, poker-straight dark hair that perfectly fit the fashion of the day—explaining with great relish the research she was doing in preparation for applying to a national historical commission dedicated to preserving all structures and artifacts older than about a century.

Arnulf at 22 was a compact young man who resembled Carl Johan and Christian to some degree, but without their burgeoning attractiveness; Leslie could see that he looked more like his father than his mother. His hair was severely tidy, and his thin lips seemed to lend him a permanent look of disapproval. Kristina, a year older than her husband, seemed ill at ease; Leslie couldn't remember the date of their wedding, but it couldn't have been very long ago, judging from Kristina's furtive glances in the direction of the king and queen and her nervous silence. She alone sported a head of moonlight-blonde hair, parted in the middle and long and straight like Anna-Laura's. Kristina fielded a smiling glance from Queen Susanna and turned peony-pink.

Susanna, aged fifty-three here, was elegant and still lovely, though a bit older than Leslie remembered her being when Roarke had called her and Ulf out of their afterlives to speak with Christian a few years before. Her glossy straight hair, the chestnut color she had passed down to her younger three children, was shot through with silver strands. Of all her children, Leslie realized, it was Christian who resembled her most; he had her nose, her mouth, and the same facial shape. Only his chin and his hazel eyes were bequests from his father, to whom Leslie's gaze now shifted; at nearly fifty-five, Ulf possessed a strong, stern face decorated with a meticulously groomed mustache and a small pointed beard that Leslie thought was called a "Van Dyke". It was an old-fashioned style, but it suited Ulf somehow. She compared him and his firstborn son as she slowly circled the table to take a chair that had been pulled partway out from under the table on the side where Christian sat. She was very surprised to see that Ulf's features were actually classical in nature, and for the first time thought she could imagine what Queen Susanna might have seen in him. He was in fact more attractive than Arnulf, whose only redeeming feature seemed to be the mahogany-brown hair Ulf had passed on to him.

"I'm sure you'll get onto the commission, Anna-Laura," Susanna eventually said with that serene smile Leslie remembered from Roarke's meeting. "In fact, I think you've done far more research than you really needed to do."

"I meant to do it that way, Mother," Anna-Laura explained, tossing her head to get some of her hair back over her shoulder. She was a younger version of Susanna, except for the same hazel eyes Christian had. "The more knowledge I bombard them with, the more they'll have to realize they just can't afford to do without me."

Her older brothers laughed at that. "Trying to make yourself indispensable?" offered Carl Johan. "I knew you loved history, but I had no idea how deep it really went."

"I'm surprised," Anna-Laura said with a grin. "You know it's always been my favorite subject in school. If I can make some kind of career, or at least a difference, through my historical studies, the way you're trying to do with your horticultural ones, I'll be thrilled. It would be a dream come true. And I think, if I do make it onto that commission, I'll suggest we start right at the beginning of our history, with Magnus Ormssvärd and his deeds. I've always thought there should have been some sort of marker commemorating the Founders' Swim, even if we're not sure exactly where he and his men landed. And Father, have you ever really looked at the stone that marks his grave? You can hardly find it in the grass unless the cemetery lawn has just been mowed, and a lot of the runes are wearing smooth. It's a wonder anyone can still read them. Don't you think we should do something about that?"

Ulf, busy eating, cast his daughter an indulgent glance. "If you think it's important, Anna-Laura, then by all means see to it that something's done."

"You should concentrate on the grave marker first," remarked Christian, sticking a fork into a spear of broccoli so large it looked like a miniature tree. "After all, like you said, nobody knows exactly where Ormsskägg landed—" He registered the huge-eyed look of aghast horror on his sister's face, realized what he'd said and snickered sheepishly. "Sorry, I meant Ormssvärd..."

Leslie wasn't sure whether it was in response to Christian's mistake or Anna-Laura's over-the-top expression of horror; but whatever the cause, it was enough to make the entire family burst into laughter, including Ulf and Arnulf. She herself started laughing as well, realizing at last that this was in fact the origin of Christian's constant twitting of Anna-Laura by deliberately twisting Magnus Ormssvärd's Viking surname.

Anna-Laura was still gaping at Christian in offended shock. "Why on earth did you call him that?" she cried. "Fate take you, Christian, how disrespectful!"

"It was an accident!" Christian protested, rolling his eyes. "You act like he's a notch below the gods or something. He's been dead at least eight hundred years, so I don't think he's going to care if I call him Ormssvärd or Ormsskägg or Ormsspekk, for that matter."

 _"Christian Carl Tobias!"_ Anna-Laura screeched while everyone else broke down laughing. Christian just grinned; Leslie slumped in her chair with mirth, now realizing why Anna-Laura always took such exception to Christian's teasing about Ormssvärd. _She should consider herself lucky he stuck with "Ormsskägg",_ she thought, watching her husband's twelve-year-old self start sawing his broccoli into separate parts with his knife. _After all, "Ormsspekk" is a lot worse!_ When Christian started to laugh too, Leslie took in the wide-open amusement on the faces of Ulf and Arnulf, and got the feeling this was one of the few times Christian had ever managed to elicit any reaction from them that wasn't negative. _He must really cherish this memory,_ she thought, still giggling. _No wonder—I would too!_

"All right, all right now," a laughing Susanna said finally, "I think we've had enough fun at Anna-Laura's expense."

"She doesn't have to take old Magnus quite that seriously, though," Ulf remarked, shaking his head and still grinning. It seemed to transform him and Leslie could suddenly see a bit closer resemblance between him and Christian. "In the end, even our first ancestor was just a human being. As for you, boy, now that you've provided the evening's entertainment, this might be a good time to go on to some other subject."

"Too bad," Carl Johan remarked, grinning. "That's the best laugh I've had in months."

"I had no idea he was as clever as that," said Arnulf, eyeing Christian with surprised interest. "That was actually pretty funny, Christian." He took in the dirty glare Anna-Laura favored him with and shook his head. "Stop taking it so personally, _lill'syster_. I don't think I could blame him if he started calling him Ormsskägg on purpose, if you're going to react like that." He leaned over to kiss Kristina's cheek. "You see there, we're not so stuffy and formal as you were afraid we are. Relax, Kristina _min_ , and join in the conversation."

"Yeah," Christian said, "it's not like you have to sit here and have every meal with old Ormsskägg himself." Anna-Laura half stood up in her chair.

"Keep it up, Christian," she threatened, raising a fist.

"I probably will," Christian teased, smirking. "You look hilarious when you get mad." Carl Johan snorted with amusement again; Anna-Laura growled something Leslie couldn't make out, but it must have carried quite a stigma, for her parents, brothers and sister-in-law stared at her in amazement.

"Anna-Laura, let's not carry this too far," Susanna said. "That's enough, Christian. As your father said, let's talk of something else." But when the subject was duly changed, Leslie noticed her wink at Christian, whose wide grin was the last thing Leslie saw before the dining room and everything therein dissolved like dust around her and a door appeared a few feet away. Snickering to herself, she arose to let herself through it; Christian, she saw, had not yet returned from his experience with her memory, and she settled into a chair to wait, looking forward to hearing his comments on it.


	5. Chapter 5

§ § § - July 18, 1977

Christian had to admit he'd never seen anything quite like this, not even during the 1983 tour he had taken across North America with his parents, Carl Johan and Amalia. They had never really seen everyday, small-town, mundane America. But here, he could tell, he was going to get an overdose of that very thing. The numerous huge station wagons and coupes of the type he remembered his wife referring to as "land yachts" peppered the parking lot of a large grocery store; all over the place, women sporting pink plastic curlers in their hair and children in sandals, sneakers, shorts, tank tops and T-shirts ran around or trailed their mothers. Babies and toddlers kicked their feet in the fold-out seats of shopping carts; people flowed constantly in and out the entrance; kids on bikes kept circling the lot's perimeter; and over all was the noise of traffic on the nearby streets and the calls of mothers reprimanding wayward children.

"All right, girls, come on," said a voice nearby, and he twisted around at the waist to see, behind him, a weary-looking Shannon Hamilton, corralling Kristy and Kelly as they emerged from the tailgate of the same dusty white station wagon he had seen in Leslie's 1973 memory. The car now looked even dustier somehow. Kristy and Kelly were in the middle of a scuffle, and Shannon said in a sharp voice, "Stop that now, both of you!" Christian was surprised when they did so instantly; but the startled looks the twins gave their mother indicated that she probably didn't often raise her voice in that manner. Shannon eyed them in warning, then peered over her shoulder and called, "Leslie, where are you?"

Leslie emerged from behind a huge, shiny black pickup truck, pushing a shopping cart. "Getting one of these," she said. "We're gonna need it."

"Thank you, Leslie," Shannon said with a wan smile. Christian sensed a movement at his side and looked around in time to see Kelly give Kristy a pinch that made Kristy squawk aloud and Shannon turn around. "Kelly Janet, if you don't stop this instant, I'll make you ride in the cart seat like a two-year-old!"

"I wouldn't fit," Kelly protested.

Shannon glared at her; Kristy made a face, and Leslie caught up to them with the cart, venturing, "I've got the list and all the coupons too, Mom."

Again Shannon thanked her, releasing a long sigh. Pushing back her limp hair, she started for the store, giving the girls a perfunctory order to follow her. Christian fell in beside the cart so he could gaze at Leslie again; she had been right about looking like the family portrait that resided on a living-room shelf in their house. She looked a little tired herself, pulling out the collar of the mint-green shirt she wore and trying to fan herself with it. Christian couldn't blame her; the heat raised shimmery distortions on the pavement and atop every car in the lot, and he realized it must be high summer in this recollection.

Fortunately, the interior of the supermarket was air-conditioned, making them all sigh with relief. "Mom, could we get some ice cream?" Kelly asked the moment they had cleared the automatic doors.

Shannon shot her an exasperated look that Christian had seen on his mother, sister, both sisters-in-law, his wife, and his nephew Gerhard's wife. "Kelly, I'm going to warn you one last time," she said. "If you ask for anything else, or if you pick any more fights with either of your sisters, you'll go out and sit in the car till we're through."

Her ultimatum astonished Christian and he made a note to ask Leslie about it when he returned to the present day. Kelly just pouted, but she finally did fall silent, and the foursome moved along through the aisles while Christian trailed along, staving off boredom only by reading labels on packages. In the third aisle Kristy broke the silence by asking, "Is ice cream on the shopping list, Leslie?"

Leslie picked up the list, which she had dropped onto the cart's child seat, and ran an index finger down it. "Yeah, but it's butter brickle again," she said, grimacing. Christian chuckled when Kristy copied it.

"Really?" Kelly broke in, perking up.

"It's Dad's favorite," Kristy reminded her twin pointedly. Kelly looked at Leslie for confirmation, and Leslie nodded, a _you better believe it_ look on her face that made Christian grin. _Fate forfend they buy Michael Hamilton's choice of ice cream flavor,_ he thought.

"Oh, blast," Kelly grumbled. "I wish I could find a quarter under something, and then I could get a Coke out of the machine."

"I wish we had two dollars to buy a great big bucket of ice cream over at Baskin-Robbins," Kristy said dreamily, climbing onto the back end of the shopping cart.

"I wish we had a secret bank account that had a million dollars in it," said Leslie unexpectedly. "One that Dad could never, ever get into." Christian stared at her in amused surprise and wondered if the present-day incarnation of his wife remembered saying that.

"I wish I could go on a shopping trip without a lot of wishes," murmured Shannon through a sigh. "Leslie, do me a favor, please. Go through those coupons and see if we have any for ice cream in there. I have to admit, I wouldn't mind something besides butter brickle myself." Her daughters giggled, and Leslie picked up a sheaf of coupons that had been paper-clipped together and began searching through it. When she did indeed unearth one, her sisters cheered, and Shannon sent Leslie to go find the brand in question. Of course, Christian went with Leslie, curious as to what flavor she'd pick.

He was watching her search through the floor freezers for the brand on the coupon when both he and Leslie heard someone call her name. They looked around at the same moment, and Leslie straightened up with pure surprise all over her face, watching another girl approach her. "Hi, Leslie. Are you doing anything fun this summer?"

Leslie grinned and seemed to relax. "Not a whole lot, but my mother's been taking me and my sisters to the town pool most days. It's been so hot lately. I wish we could take a trip to the beach."

"We did that last month," the other girl said. "You can't swim in the ocean—it's freezing cold." Leslie shrugged and opened her mouth to say something, but then someone called for "Katie" and the girl whipped around. "Oh...gotta go...have a fun summer."

"You too," Leslie said, watching the other girl depart, then releasing a sigh and going back to her search. _Another question for you, my Rose,_ Christian thought, watching Leslie slide open a glass door and shift ice-cream cartons around till she found one that contained chocolate and lifted it out. She compared the carton with the picture on the coupon, then brightened, grinned, and poked around in the freezer again, eventually unearthing another brick of ice cream just like the first and lifting it out. "Two for one," Leslie said aloud, smirking. "Finally, no more stupid butter brickle." She marched off, proudly toting the cartons, with Christian behind her laughing to himself.

They rejoined Shannon and the twins in the fifth aisle; Kristy and Kelly both cheered again when they saw Leslie's choices. "Two of them?" Shannon asked.

"Look, Mom, it's buy one, get one free," Leslie said excitedly, showing her the coupon. "I bet we could finish faster if we all split up and looked for the stuff on the coupons."

Shannon managed a grin at that and slid an arm around Leslie's shoulders, squeezing. "That's my girl," she said. "By all means. You divide the coupons between you and your sisters, and I'll take care of the other things on the list. We'll meet near the checkout counters, and don't get anything you don't have a coupon for." She eyed Kelly and Kristy as she said this. "Be careful to get exactly what the coupon says you can."

The twins and Leslie nodded, and the girls scattered; again, Christian followed Leslie, amazed when she began rapidly piling up food items in her arms like a pro. When she could no longer hold them, she found her mother and dumped her armload into the cart, gave Shannon the corresponding coupons, and went back for more. _So this is how commoners get by every day,_ he marveled, aware on an uncomfortable level that the very thought made him some kind of out-of-step anachronism, but knowing at the same time that he was only the product of his privileged upbringing. He derailed that train of thought lest he miss too much of this memory he was witnessing, watching Leslie finish gathering groceries and go back to add the latest load to the cart.

After a seeming eon the twins both reappeared and dumped more things into the cart; then Shannon got into line at the nearest open checkout and started double-checking the contents of the cart against her list and the fistful of coupons. Meanwhile, the girls loitered behind her, the twins examining the candy displays and Leslie reading headlines on tabloids and magazines. Christian had been looking over the candy as well, trying to see if there were any familiar brands, when Kristy grew bored with this activity and meandered over to join her older sister. "Ooh, Leslie, look at that one."

"What one?" Leslie murmured absently, as Kelly straightened up and went to take a look herself.

"That one," said Kristy, pointing. "She looks just like a princess, doesn't she?"

The word _princess_ made Christian bolt up straight and take a giant step over to stand behind the girls; his mouth dropped a foot at what he saw. Ten-year-old Kristy Hamilton was pointing at a glossy magazine whose front cover was dominated by a wedding photograph; Christian's own visage stared out at him from behind the image of Johanna Rollefsen, who was beaming as though she now held the deed to the world.

"Dum-dum," Kelly scoffed, eyeing Kristy as though she needed to be booted back to first grade. "Maybe if you knew how to read the caption, you'd know that girl really is a princess." Kristy turned directly to Kelly, jutted her chin out and treated her twin sister to a loud, wet raspberry. Kelly shrank back, squealing in disgust.

Christian all but held his breath as he watched Leslie lift the magazine out of its slot in the stand and study the cover. Now that she had it in her hands, he could see the caption: "Nightmare Royal Wedding!" _What are you looking at, my Rose?_ he thought, actually going so far as to lean over and stare into the girl's face as if that would show him whose face her eyes were trained on. He still couldn't tell, so he straightened back up and gazed at his own expression in the photo. His nineteen-year-old self was looking at the camera with eyes that reflected all the emotions he remembered feeling that day—resignation, annoyance, despair, distrust, and a touch of loathing, directed at the bride.

"Leslie, put that back, please," requested Shannon, having finished going over her list and turned to see what the girls were doing. "We're not getting that."

The twins, distracted from another imminent argument, looked at their sister and began to giggle. "Leslie must have a crush on that guy," Kelly taunted.

Christian grinned when Leslie turned around and whacked Kelly over the head with the magazine. "Oh, shut up. Just because I think he's cute..."

"Yuck," Kristy blurted. "No boys are cute!"

"Well, _he_ is," Leslie said, displaying the picture at her. Christian noticed Shannon watching with amused surprise. "Too bad he's not smiling, or he'd probably be even better-looking." She stared again at Christian's image on the cover. "How come he's not happy?"

"Maybe you oughta read the article and find out," said Kristy, while Christian absorbed Leslie's words and let the wondering smile spread across his face.

"Who _is_ that guy, anyway?" Kelly asked idly, peering at the cover.

"I dunno," said Leslie, shrugging as Shannon pulled Kristy forward to help unload the cart onto the conveyor belt. Christian watched her open the magazine, check the table of contents, then flip pages till she reached the article in question, whose title repeated the cover blurb. "Oh...says here it's Prince Christian of some place called Lill...Lilla Jords-oh." She pronounced the J as it was used in English, and Christian grinned again. He knew he was going to tease his wife about this later. Then she exclaimed in disbelief, "Wow, he's only nineteen...and he just got married on Saturday!"

Even Shannon glanced over her shoulder with surprise at this. "Nineteen years old and married already? Good grief." She peered at the huge photo of the ceremony, showing Christian's depressed expression and Johanna's barely leashed rage. "Looks like neither one of them is very happy about it. Come on, Leslie, put it away now, please. I need you and Kelly to help us get this stuff out of the cart."

"Okay," Leslie agreed with a little sigh, closing the magazine and slipping it back into its slot on the stand, with a last glance at the cover. Kelly ducked around her to get to the cart, managing to step on Leslie's foot in so doing; Leslie let out an annoyed "Ow!" and shot Kelly a glare when the younger girl looked at her oddly. "Watch where you're going—you just flattened my foot!"

"Sor- _ree,"_ said Kelly with an eye-roll that belied the word, and Shannon had to stop Leslie from delivering a slap to her sister's shoulder.

"No ice cream for you," Christian heard Leslie mutter at Kelly, and snickered just as the scene vanished from around him. He let himself out the door that materialized before him, and saw Leslie in a relaxed half-slouch in the chair.

"Hi, my love," she said, grinning up at him. "What'd you think?"

Christian laughed good-naturedly. "I'll admit, for most of my time in there, I thought this memory was pointless," he said. "Following you and your mother and your sisters around that grocery store was thoroughly boring to begin with, but when you girls split up to help your mother get finished more quickly, I was impressed at how quickly you found everything you needed. It taught me something, too. I've never before seen the bustle of an ordinary shopping excursion. Even since I married you, either you went alone or you were with me if I went—and we've had the luxury of buying what we want. That clearly wasn't true of your mother."

"Oh, we probably had more leeway than I grew up thinking we did," Leslie said with a shrug. "Michael was such a tightwad, though, we had to stick to a list, and Mom got really good at clipping coupons."

"I suspect the tightwad tendencies didn't apply to him," Christian observed, and at her questioning look, said with a half-grin, "Butter brickle ice cream."

"Eccchhhh!" Leslie blurted, and he laughed again. "To this day I hate even the mention of the stuff! I'm not sure what Mom thought of it, but Kristy and Kelly and I all hated it. Kelly was always asking for ice cream, every time Mom had to take us with her for groceries; she'd beg for any flavor they had as long as it wasn't butter brickle."

"What exactly is butter brickle?" he queried. "I've never heard of it."

"It's kind of a buttery vanilla ice cream with toffee bits in it. They stopped making it sometime in the 80s, I think. It was actually pretty good, but the twins and I avoided it on principle because Michael loved it and ate it all the time." She grinned at his soft laugh. "Any other questions before I take my turn?"

"A few. Your sister Kelly was begging for ice cream on this trip as well, and your mother must have been having problems with you girls all day, because she finally told Kelly to stop or she could sit in the car till the rest of you were finished. You know perfectly well that would never be allowed nowadays, what with the high awareness of the dangers of leaving pets and small children in cars during the summer. Why did she say that?"

"It was different in the seventies," Leslie said. "Nobody thought twice about using that as a punishment. I think it was assumed that if you were beyond a certain age, you should know enough to open the car windows. And you didn't have the constant reports of abducted and vanished kids that you do these days. Those were the closing years of a more innocent era." She smiled faintly with reminiscence, then focused on him. "What else?"

"While you were looking for ice cream, someone named Katie came up to you and talked for a moment. Do you remember anyone by that name?"

"Not off the top of my head, but I probably went to school with her and she recognized me," said Leslie. "The only schoolmate I can really remember anymore was Cindy Lou, and her, I don't _want_ to remember."

Christian laughed again. "I see. I must admit, you certainly surprised me when Kristy pointed out that magazine cover that Johanna and I appeared on. I'm sure you never imagined that one day you'd be married to that 'cute guy' in the photo."

"I'd have died laughing if anyone had told me that," Leslie agreed cheerfully. "Are you done? I've got some questions for you now. Seriously—Snake's _Lard?"_

Christian's entire upper torso tilted back as he exploded with laughter. "So you did get the meaning of that one! I'll tell you a secret: that was the one I intended to use every time I wanted to annoy my sister, but she reacted with such violence that I thought I'd be better off sticking with Ormsskâgg after all, despite that I preferred Ormsspekk. My nieces and nephews got a big enough kick out of her reaction to the Ormsskägg appellation that I didn't mind so much after all. Anna-Laura's usually difficult to ruffle, but for some reason she has an admiration for Magnus Ormssvärd that I personally think is all out of proportion to the significance the man had in our history. So when I call our original ancestor Ormsskägg, it's like teasing Anna-Kristina—the reaction is always worth seeing."

"You're still an incorrigible rogue," Leslie remarked, grinning. "But I don't think you'd be the same Christian Enstad if you weren't. What amazed me is the fact that both Sire and Arnulf thought it was funny too. They must've been in good moods that evening."

"I always figured that in Arnulf's case, it was due to his being a newlywed; he and Kristina had been married barely two months, I think. Where Father was concerned, fate only knows. In any case, I've always enjoyed that memory." He chuckled one last time, then regarded her. "You know, it occurred to me just now...I thought it quite touching when, in this memory, your mother saw that article about Johanna and me, and expressed sympathy for me when she saw our expressions in that one photo of us during the ceremony. I see now where you got your empathetic bent."

"Now you know for a fact—Mom would've loved you," Leslie said softly. "Not as much as I do, but then again, nobody could." She returned his grin and hugged him; then he pulled back enough to kiss her, which was what Roarke caught them doing a few minutes later when he looked in on them.

"I wondered what was delaying you two," he said humorously, breaking them apart and earning sheepish grins from them. "I trust you enjoyed this latest memory-sharing session? I seem to recall hearing laughter in here."

"We did, yes," Christian said, grinning again. "This is truly an amazing gift you're giving us, Mr. Roarke. Just be careful you don't spoil us—because if Anna-Kristina is deemed in good health when she wakes on Saturday, and allowed to sleep her way through the remainder of her waiting period with the serum, you may find yourself entertaining our pleas to do more of this."

Roarke gave them both a mysterious look, but said only, "Why don't you come out of there. Your daughter has begun to miss you." Christian and Leslie looked at each other, both shrugged at once, and then grinned again, leaving the time-travel room for the day.


	6. Chapter 6

§ § § - - October 8, 2009

On Thursday afternoon Anastasia decided to stay awake; and what was more, she chose to get fussy for one of the few times her parents could list. She wouldn't let go of Leslie, not even to go to Roarke; while she did consent to go to Christian, she clearly preferred to remain with Leslie for the most part. "This is unusual," Christian observed, watching Anastasia put her head stubbornly on her mother's shoulder and eye her surroundings with what looked like nothing so much as distrust. "She's always so easygoing, it's a surprise when she gets moody."

"I might have to take her with me into your memory," Leslie remarked with a faint sigh. "Unless we wait around a few minutes and see if she goes to sleep."

Christian smiled, edging over to stand just at her shoulder and slowly smooth the baby's hair with one palm. Anastasia didn't seem to mind this, as long as no one tried to move her; she peered at her father for a minute, then poked a thumb in her mouth and went back to staring warily toward the inner foyer.

Roarke regarded his daughter and son-in-law with just enough amusement that they took notice. "Something funny, Father?" Leslie asked.

"The two of you," said Roarke indulgently, "so eager to rush into each other's recollections that you must force patience with your recalcitrant child. I sometimes think you two would far rather simply be with each other than anything else in the world—including spending time with your children."

"We've been with this little turkey the entire day," Leslie said in mild protest, grinning. "I think she's just decided to see what we'll do if she gets cranky on us."

"Come on now, Stasia, try to sleep," Christian coaxed his daughter in a soft voice. "You missed your morning nap—I suspect that's what's making you so clingy now. If you go to sleep now, you'll never know we were gone, and when you wake, we'll be right there."

Leslie giggled. "Listen to you, my love, trying to reason with a baby."

"Who knows but that it just might work?" Christian returned whimsically, and they all laughed softly. "Perhaps if you continue to hold her, and I keep stroking her hair, it might make her drowsy enough to drift off."

"What have the older children been doing in school lately?" Roarke asked, and that gave them a chance to distract themselves while Christian and Leslie summarized the triplets' latest school activities. Their conversation turned to a few other subjects, including the progression of the plans to form an administrative committee that Leslie could oversee whether she happened to be on the island or in Lilla Jordsö; Roarke asked Leslie if she had spoken to Michiko and Camille about taking positions on it, and Leslie admitted she hadn't had the opportunity as yet.

"Which I find curious, since Michiko is next door and we should see her every day," Christian said. "Perhaps it shouldn't be; we don't see Grady and Maureen every day either. The latest in regard to Catalina, we heard last month, is that she and Michiko are on speaking terms, at least via e-mail. Apparently she sends her mother a few lines in the messages Michiko exchanges with her stepson the king, and now Cat has begun badgering Michiko to move back to Arcolos. It's hard to believe a child that young can be so stubborn; but I've heard of people to whom place is everything, who are so attached to one place from an amazingly early age that any attempt to transplant them somewhere else is doomed to spectacular failure. It seems Cat is one such."

Roarke smiled. "So it would appear. Of course, the great probability is that in the wake of Errico's death last year, being uprooted from her home was more traumatic change than young Catalina was prepared to withstand."

"It still amazes me that it would manifest in her this early in her life," Christian said. "In any case, Michiko keeps busy giving singing lessons to students from the Air Force base, and the last time Leslie spoke with her, Michiko reported that at least one Arcolosian publisher is interested in having her write her memoir."

"Indeed!" said Roarke, amused.

"She wasn't sure what to make of that," Leslie remarked with a grin. "She said something to me about how memoirs are for those in the twilight of their lives. I'm not calling her vain, but I think she's not exactly thrilled about being seen as old, even obliquely. She didn't like the thought of being the dowager queen either."

"Then she'd better not move back to Arcolos," Christian said, lifting a brow.

"I don't think she planned on it," Leslie told him, surprised. "Why do you ask?"

He cleared his throat a little and draped his right arm loosely over her right shoulder, still absently smoothing Anastasia's downy head. "I had e-mails from no fewer than three different family members: Gerhard—which was a surprise—Carl Johan, and Roald, asking if we had decided yet where we ultimately plan to live. They came last night, which was why I was in the library on the computer for so long. It's October, my Rose. We need to start making some hard-and-fast decisions about certain things."

She nodded reluctantly, and Roarke studied them. "This is, of course, entirely up to the two of you; but if you need any questions answered or simply wish for an impartial sounding board, you know you may always talk with me."

Relief filled Leslie's face, and Christian smiled. "I think we'd both like that, Mr. Roarke, thank you. Perhaps tomorrow or Saturday."

Roarke nodded and agreed, "Very well. I do suggest, however, that you at least talk a little before that meeting. I suspect you've both been putting it off because you still have time, but that time is rapidly running out, and you'll have to decide and begin implementing whatever it takes to carry through with those decisions." As Christian and Leslie nodded, he noticed the baby and smiled. "You seem to have soothed Anastasia to sleep. You can leave her in her crib in your old room, Leslie, and then you two can visit each other's memories."

"Don't worry, my Rose," Christian said softly on their way back downstairs after settling Anastasia. "We'll find a way, but please don't fret about it right this minute; I want you to enjoy these memories."

She squeezed his hand and paused long enough to smile at him. "Okay, my love...I'll do my best. I'm just...I'm just so glad I have you." She threw her arms around him, and he hugged her hard; neither of them saw Roarke standing near the desk, watching them with a wistful look about him. By the time they came out of their embrace, they saw only the same calm, courtly, smiling man they had known for years, crossing the room toward them to send them on their latest little adventure.

"I'm sure you two know what to do by now," Roarke said humorously, returning their grins. "Christian?"

"You may gain a little more insight into how I was beginning to think with this one," Christian said slowly. "I was sixteen in it and having something of a brother-to-brother talk with Carl Johan. You'll see what about when you get there."

Leslie nodded, feeling about as pensive as he looked at the moment. "Yours might be easier to take than mine. What you'll be seeing is my thirteenth birthday. It was just about three months before the fire. Keep an eye on my mother."

Roarke glanced back and forth between them, then asked gently, "Are you ready?"

They both nodded, and he gestured toward the doors; this time, they shared another long hug, as if trying to reassure each other, before venturing forth. When the doors had closed behind them both, Roarke drew in a long, steadying breath, let it out, and withdrew from an inner jacket pocket the two sheets of paper on which his daughter and son-in-law had written out memories to share. _Tomorrow will be easier,_ he promised silently. _Tomorrow will be happier. Let me give you all the gifts I can, while I have the ability._ He flicked a glance toward the ceiling. The tribunal could just cool their heels for at least another day.

§ § § - May 6, 1978

At first Christian wasn't sure he was in the right place. Confused, he stared at the house and lawn before him, then frowned and began to pivot in place, checking out his surroundings. _Ah yes, that's right,_ he realized. He could recall the other homes on Banner Street from his trip with Leslie to Susanville after a neighborhood boy had discovered the safe Shannon had left behind; but what he remembered otherwise was an overgrown vacant lot with a lone dead tree and a depression holding a small mountain of ashes and half-buried secrets. Not here, not at this time. The tree was vibrantly alive, verdant with spring leaves; the yard was neatly mowed, and there were flower beds along the front of the white two-story house. He stared at the structure in fascination; it had a slightly Swiss look to it, he thought, with the scrolling scalloped edge running along the gable that faced the street and the dark-green window shutters that actually had heart-shaped cutouts in them. Two double windows looked out from the upper story; the lower story held a bow window at the left of the front door and a window at the right that appeared to be half again the height of the upstairs ones. Christian gazed in amazement; Leslie had talked so much of her stingy biological father that he could hardly believe this was the house she had lived in with Shannon, Michael, Kristy and Kelly. _Putting up appearances?_ he wondered. _Making himself look good by providing a decent place to live, without allowing his wife to give their girls more than the bare minimum quality of things they needed?_ All he could do was shake his head.

A balmy breeze stirred his hair and lifted the corner of the pink-and-green cloth covering the picnic table that sat in the front yard. It looked deserted, but there were a few covered platters sitting on it, along with a stack of paper plates, another of napkins that had been anchored with a mustard bottle, and a small plastic basket holding plastic forks, knives and spoons. As he stood gazing at the scene, the front door flew open and out popped the twins, each one carrying a gaily wrapped present; Shannon came out behind them with what clearly had to be a covered cake plate. Christian pulled in a breath, ventured into the yard and skirted the table, giving Shannon, Kristy and Kelly a fairly wide berth as if he were afraid they would sense him there. But he had a purpose to his step, and the front door—which had no screen door, he saw—stood wide open. He trotted up the wooden stoop and into the house, emerging into a living room that contained a collection of worn fifties-vintage furniture. To the right was the dining room and, mostly hidden from view, the kitchen toward the back of the house, the way he remembered Leslie describing it in their 2002 visit here. A flight of stairs led out of the living room, beginning about ten feet directly in front of him, going up three steps to a landing and then continuing on at the left, vanishing behind the back wall. As he stood there taking in the layout of the Hamilton house, he heard a muted thump from upstairs and remembered why he'd gone in. A sense of anticipation swirled around his gut and he took the initial three steps in one quick leap, then the remaining stairs two at a time.

On the second floor he found himself standing in a hall that ran the width of the house; he was at the left-hand end over the living room, where he came around the railing on the edge of the stairwell and peered toward the other end, facing that way. At his left, just at the top of the steps, was a bathroom; across from that, to his right, was an open door revealing a room filled with little-girl artifacts: unmade twin beds; dolls and stuffed animals; a bookshelf jammed with a huge collection of children's novels; framed prints of kittens and little girls wearing bonnets and patched old-fashioned dresses, mounted on the walls. The far side of the room was half covered with unicorn drawings tacked to the wall, and he leaned in enough to gape at it before letting out a delighted laugh as the memory came back to him. This was clearly Kristy and Kelly's room.

Down the hall were two more doors, one on each side of the hall; he ventured forward and cautiously stuck his head into the door on the right. At first glance it seemed to be deserted; here, too, was a twin bed, this one neatly made up, and some worn furniture—a mirrored dresser, a tiny night table painted white to match the bed, a narrow bookshelf with another collection of novels therein. The shag carpeting so popular in 1970s homes covered the floor, in a peculiar shade of pale pink that looked like cotton candy; the walls were plain white, as were the curtains at the window, though they were ruffled and tied back to make a pretty frame for the scene outside. A short stack of folded clothing sat atop the bed; as Christian watched, Leslie emerged from another part of the room he couldn't see, lifting some of the items up and making to put them away in dresser drawers.

He scrutinized her minutely: this was the girl who, just three months from now, would lose just about everything she owned. This room, the furniture, those clothes she was putting away, the books on the shelf...soon it would all be a pile of ashes. In the oddly nauseating Easter-pastel pink and unrelieved white of the room, a splotch of vivid color caught his eye and he knelt to get a better look. Crammed under a low shelf on the night table lay a fraying red duffel bag with white straps. It gave him a jolt and he straightened abruptly, remembering Leslie telling him about that duffel and how it had contained everything she had left in the world when she was sent to Fantasy Island. _My poor Rose,_ he thought, watching the girl moving serenely back and forth, _if only it could have been different for you._ And yet...if it had, would he ever have known her?

Through the open window he heard a voice call out from the front yard; Leslie heard it as well, shoving a stuck drawer back into its space before going to the window. "I'm almost done, Mom," she called out, her voice still a girl's but shading toward the adult voice he knew and loved. Shannon responded with something Christian couldn't make out; Leslie turned from the window and paused, looking around the room with critical eyes. She tucked away the last few bits of clothing, nodded, and headed out.

Christian followed her, thinking about the shabby little room Leslie had called her own for a few years, wondering at the same time if he had given her enough of what he felt she deserved. Even if he could never make up for what she had suffered at Michael's hands, he hoped at least that he could make the rest of her life as happy as possible; and in that second he made a crucial decision. _Whatever it takes to make her happy, I'll agree to it, no questions asked, no protests made._ He felt better when he'd made that vow, and emerged into the front yard behind the newly thirteen-year-old girl with a sense of hope, even in the midst of what he suspected he might see throughout the remainder of this memory.

Some neighborhood kids had gathered in the yard, including a somewhat chubby girl with wild straw-colored curls frothing around her face, wearing a T-shirt and shorts that she was clearly about to grow out of. Kristy and Kelly were running around the yard playing tag with a few other kids, and the curly-haired girl and three or four others gathered around Leslie, wishing her a happy birthday and handing her gifts. Shannon called everyone to the picnic table, and the party got under way, with everyone having sandwiches, potato salad, pickles both sweet and sour, and some store-brand soda to wash it down. For dessert there was the birthday cake; the group sang to Leslie, Shannon urged her to blow out the candles before the breeze did it for her, and soon everyone was enjoying the cake, along with some ice cream ( _hmm, not butter brickle, I see!_ Christian thought with amusement). The curly-haired girl, Christian had learned by now, was the infamous Cindy Lou Brooks; the others were evidently some of Leslie's school classmates. Leslie unwrapped several gifts—a book, a tiny silver puffed heart on a matching chain to go around her neck, a gray plush mouse with a pink ribbon tied around its neck—and Christian watched her thank each giver with a broad smile, painfully aware that these things, like the rest, would be burnt to ashes soon. For the first time, he chanced a look at Shannon; he found himself staring at the tortured expression on the woman's face as she gazed at her daughter opening birthday gifts.

"Mom, are you okay?" asked one of the twins while Leslie was thanking one of the older girls for her gift of a set of little notepads.

Shannon's head shot around to stare, and she managed a smile that Christian could see didn't fool the girl at all. "I'm fine, Kelly, why?"

" 'Cause you look funny," said Kelly frankly. "It's a birthday party, so you're s'posed to be happy. We're all having fun—" She cut herself off just then, at the same moment a large dark-blue sedan pulled into the empty driveway. Christian realized for the first time that the dusty white station wagon was gone; they must have traded it in for this new car at some point between Leslie's last memory and this one. The arrival attracted everyone else's attention, and a moment later Christian understood why: the driver got out, slammed the car door, and approached slowly, all the while staring at the little party in the yard. His face was lean and speckled with stubble; he was tall and wiry but a little scrawny, with muscular arms showing the outlines of major veins running down them, and dressed in worn jeans, an ancient T-shirt spotted with equally ancient stains, and dirty white sneakers. A tattered, dusty Boston Red Sox cap crowned his head, but Christian could see hair the color of dirty dishwater sticking out in short, straight spikes from beneath the rim. He squinted, not entirely from the sun, and paused a few feet from the picnic table, glaring.

"What the hell is all this?" he asked finally, in a sharp voice that still carried a fair load of Boston accent. Oddly, it reminded Christian of Ben Keller. "What're you doing?"

"We're celebrating Leslie's birthday," Shannon said evenly, meeting his malevolent stare with a quietly defiant one of her own. "You were supposed to be gone all day."

"Yeah, well, the golf game fell through," said Michael Hamilton, surveying the table with the remains of the cake, the empty paper plates, the wadded-up wrapping paper, the few small presents Leslie had received. "So I guess you figured you could go ahead and give that brat a party just for turning thirteen, since I wasn't here."

Christian, appalled, looked at Leslie, whose face was stony, with the red tint of angry embarrassment showing through despite the façade she tried to put up. Michael's last sentence seemed to goad her; she aimed a curled lip in his direction and sniped, "Wow, I can't believe you actually remembered how old I am."

Leslie's schoolmates looked nervously at one another; Cindy Lou giggled in a high-pitched voice, and Kelly began to snicker silently, both hands over her mouth. Kristy looked frightened; Shannon closed her eyes. "Leslie, please," she said softly.

"Dammit, you brat, keep it up and this'll be the last birthday you see," Michael threatened, moving a few steps in her direction as if to follow through on it.

Shannon shot to her feet and shouted, "Michael Hamilton, if you ever again make a threat like that, I'll make sure you regret it! Don't you ever, _ever_ speak to my child like that again! Lay a hand on any of these girls, and I'll have you arrested!" As she spoke, she marched toward him till they stood toe to toe, and her enraged face was practically touching his. "Do you understand me?"

"You love me," Michael said with a small smirk. "You wouldn't dare."

 _"Try me,"_ Shannon growled, low but deadly.

For a long moment Leslie's parents stood there facing off, and Christian had the sense of time stopping in that instant. Once more he looked at Leslie; she had her lips compressed, but her expression was unreadable. Kristy's chin was trembling; Kelly just sat there eyeing Michael as if waiting for him to test Shannon.

Then Michael gave in. "I'm going down to Sears and pick up some stuff," he said, his voice brusque with disgust. "Make sure all this crap is cleaned up and gone by the time I get back here."

"My daughters and I will celebrate as long as we like," Shannon informed him with an icy glare, "and you will _not_ dictate terms to us. If you want no part of this, then you may as well find the nearest bar and start drowning yourself in the bottle, because I refuse to allow you to deprive Leslie of her birthday party just because you feel like being vindictive."

Michael expelled a few curses, stalked to the car, threw himself into it and backed out, then peeled rubber on his way out. Kristy dropped her head on the table and began to cry; Shannon went to her and soothed her, while Leslie's guests peered uneasily at her and Kelly ran into the street to blow a loud raspberry after the disappearing car.

"And that," Leslie muttered, face flaming, "was my so-called dad."

The girls were silent, as if unsure of what to say; Christian wanted to comfort Leslie in some way, tell her things would be better. But then Shannon came around and gathered Leslie's face in her hands. "I'm sorry, honey. I really thought he'd be gone all day."

"Mom, it wasn't your fault he came back," said Leslie. "He's just..." She seemed to see something in her mother's face and squinted up at her. "What's the matter? You look like something horrible's gonna happen."

 _Oh, my Rose!_ was all Christian could think, especially when Shannon's eyes flew wide for just a split second. Then she regrouped and managed another smile, no more convincing than her previous one had been. "Your father just made me very angry, that's all," Shannon assured her. She lifted her head and took in the group. "Come on, girls, let's have fun."

However, it was clear that Michael's intrusion had irretrievably destroyed the happy mood of the day, and one by one the girls made excuses and left, even Cindy Lou. There seemed to be little choice left but for Shannon, Leslie, Kristy and Kelly to start clearing off the table and putting things away. It didn't take long; the four of them together toted the now-bare picnic table out to the back yard, then gathered around the dining-room table in-side and looked gloomily at one another. Finally Kristy, her voice still a bit thick from crying, said, "I'm going upstairs and draw some stuff."

Kelly bolted upright in her chair. "Oh _no_ , not more stupid _unicorns!_ Geez, Kristy, really, come _on_...you already have a million of 'em on your side of the room."

"I do not," said Kristy with dignity, rising from her chair. "I have only forty-two—I counted." Regally she marched out of the room and up the stairs. Christian couldn't help laughing, watching her go.

"Geez," Kelly groaned again. "I'm going outside." So saying, she jumped up and ran out the back door, leaving Shannon and Leslie alone.

Leslie was thumbing the pages of her new book, staring at the tabletop without seeing it. Shannon reached out and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. "Leslie, honey, I'm sorry. I know he embarrassed you in front of your friends..."

Leslie shrugged listlessly. "Yeah...he completely ruined my birthday."

"Next year's will be better," Shannon promised, startling Christian; he had been leaning against the archway into the dining room, and went alert, listening hard. "Next year, honey, everything will be different. I can promise you that and know for a fact it'll be true. It'll be different and it'll be much better."

The unusual conviction in her voice made Leslie look up, bewildered. "You sound like you're predicting the future, Mom."

Shannon smiled a desolate little smile. "Maybe I am," she murmured. "But whatever else happens, honey, remember, it will be better, and that's my solemn promise to you."

Apparently Leslie chose to believe this, for she smiled back, got up and hugged her mother. "Thanks, Mom."

Like a sidewalk painting washing away in the rain, the scene melted around Christian, and he opened the door before him, poked his head out and looked around the time-travel room, finding it empty. For some reason he felt drained; he wilted into the nearby chair and closed his eyes, waiting for Leslie, cementing his promise to her as he considered what he had just seen.


	7. Chapter 7

§ § § - December 21, 1974

Leslie was standing in the west corridor of Lilla Jordsö's royal castle, staring straight at an inhumanly good-looking teenage boy who could only be Christian. He was easy to recognize; his features in his youth were smooth and sharply outlined, carved from alabaster perhaps, astounding in their perfection. His dark hair was just slightly long; he was dressed in a tuxedo that fit him exactly, and he stood in front of the door to what Leslie recognized as Carl Johan and Amalia's suite, hands driven deeply into his pants pockets and head tilted back, his eyes closed and a weary expression on his beautiful face. He was slightly shorter than she knew him; she remembered his telling her he had been sixteen in this memory, and supposed he must have taken another year or two to reach his full adult height. She stared in wonder, wanting to touch him somehow, to smooth his hair, to stroke his cheek, to give him a hug.

Finally Christian shook his head, pulled one hand free and rapped on the door; he was raking his hand through his glossy chestnut-hued hair when it opened, revealing Carl Johan, looking much as Leslie knew him but without the gray hairs and the extra lines on his face. "Oh, Christian," the older prince said in surprise, taking in his brother's expression. "Are you all right? Something wrong?"

Christian gazed at him with a pleading expression atypical of him. "I hope you don't mind if we talk," he said. "I've...I've got something on my mind."

"Come in, by all means," Carl Johan invited, and opened the door enough to allow Christian in. Leslie managed to dart in behind him before Carl Johan pushed it shut again; she peered around the room while the two princes took seats. It was just about the same as it was in the present day. She was taking a seat of her own when Amalia emerged from the bedroom half of the suite, already clad in an expensive-looking nightgown and robe.

Christian looked uncomfortable. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Christian asked to talk," Carl Johan explained to Amalia, who also looked much like her current self but minus the touch of gray and the softening of the face. Youth, Leslie noted with a little smile, had truly blessed the Enstad family, and somehow for the most part they had retained their good looks into the present day.

"Oh, I see," Amalia said now. "No, don't worry, Christian. I'll just close myself into the bedroom here—I meant to read before I get some sleep. Have a good talk." She smiled, took Carl Johan's hands and gave him a soft but lingering kiss, then murmured a goodnight to them both and retreated.

Carl Johan, smiling after her, made himself comfortable, then regarded his younger brother, whose face seemed almost agonized somehow. He had been staring after Amalia, then shifted his gaze to Carl Johan; when the brothers' eyes met, Christian swallowed and let his head droop. Carl Johan's smile faded and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, peering at Christian with concern. "What's wrong, _ungstebror?"_

"Is there something wrong with me?" Christian asked plaintively.

Carl Johan's gaze grew a bit confused. "How do you mean, 'wrong'?"

"I just...oh, I don't know." Christian fell back in his chair, his head flopping against its back, staring blankly at the ceiling while his hands drooped over the chair arms. His tuxedo jacket had come unbuttoned somehow, revealing a ruby-red cummerbund. "I can't believe I used to look forward to being able to attend the Christmas ball every year," he grumbled. "It's such a damned bore. Nobody decent to talk to, Father constantly pushing me to dance, girls staring at me and then looking away when I look back..."

Carl Johan settled back in his chair again and crossed one leg casually over the other. "Well, I don't know if that means there's anything wrong with you, Christian. I mean, have you looked in the mirror lately?"

"What, you mean my looks? Well, if I'm supposed to be so good-looking, why don't I have girls begging to dance with me? Not that I'd bother. All those high-society divas with their demands and their expectations, trying to be poised and sophisticated and regal, and they just come across as snobbish and stuck-up. But when I see a girl I might actually want to dance with, she looks away and manages to get lost in the crowd."

"You might be _too_ good-looking," Carl Johan commented with a teasing grin. "Let's face it, Christian, you're every teenage girl's fantasy. If girls have wet dreams, I bet you'd be the leading star of them all." He laughed at Christian's dirty look. "That's supposed to be a compliment, in case you weren't sure."

"If you say so," Christian said dubiously. "If that's all they want me for..."

After a silent pause, Carl Johan frowned. "All right then, Christian, why are you really here? What's on your mind?"

Christian opened his mouth twice to speak, catching himself each time before he said anything, frowning. At last he seemed to figure out what he wanted to say. "How did you know you were in love with Amalia?"

Carl Johan's face became a surprised mask; he shifted in his chair, giving himself time to think, and absently scratched his head while Christian watched him. At last Carl Johan stilled and sighed. "Well...that's a hard thing to explain. I know how it all happened, or at least how everyone will tell you it happened. Amalia latched onto me at that Christmas ball, told me she loved me, and made me fall by our second dance together."

"That's the tabloid story," said Christian. "What's the real one?"

Carl Johan chuckled and admitted, "Well, it took a little bit longer than that, but not very much. Amalia had my attention from the time the Sjöbloms were first presented to Mother and Father on the dais—you know how attendees at their first-ever Christmas ball have to formally meet the family." Christian nodded. "I was debating asking her to dance, but some other girl got to me first, and then I sat one out. As soon as I got back onto the floor, Amalia approached me and asked for a dance, and I agreed. What actually happened was that, at the end of the first dance, Amalia admitted to being one of my many admirers through all the photographs of me that were being published at the time, the way they are now of you. During that dance, she had asked me a string of questions, so many that I had no chance to ask her any. But the fact that she showed such interest in me was very flattering, and since I'd noticed her earlier anyway, I thought there might be something there. So I kept her out for the second dance, and I took my turn to ask her questions. When that dance ended, she gave me a kiss and informed me that she had just fallen in love with me."

 _"Herregud,"_ Christian said, clearly fascinated. "And you fell then?"

"Not quite...it took me three more dances, and then I knew this was the girl for me and there'd never be another. I sneaked her into one of the guest suites in the south wing and really kissed her for the first time, during the final dance when all the lights are turned as low as they'll go. I was hooked from then on, forever. Still am." He smiled a little, as if he didn't realize he was doing it. "We tried to maintain some sort of propriety, but we both knew we were the right ones for each other, and we started making love three weeks after we first met. You know the rest, of course...we couldn't keep our hands off each other, and now we have a three-year-old and another baby on its way."

"I wonder what you'll tell Gerhard if he ever asks about it," Christian said through a laugh. "Okay, maybe the real thing wasn't quite like the tabloid version, but it's close enough to pass as such. But you're saying, anyway, that...you knew you were in love with Amalia by the end of that Christmas ball where you met."

Carl Johan nodded. "Yes, I think that's a reasonably accurate assessment."

Christian stared into the distance, his eyes unfocused but seemingly trained on some spot on the floor. Leslie took in his seated stance as she and Carl Johan waited for his next question; he sat almost like a typical teenage boy, long legs stretched out straight in front of him, feet resting on the backs of his shoes,slouching slightly. Yet despite the slump, there was still and always something regal and elegant about him. The tux, of course, lent him an additional luster that merely made him seem that much more unreal somehow.

"Did you ever fall in love before Amalia?" Christian queried after some time.

Carl Johan had to consider the question. "Hmm...no," he mused at some length, "I don't think so. That's not to say I was never interested, but just in the way any teenage boy is...I'm sure you know how I mean." Christian only hiked an eyebrow at that, and Leslie laughed softly at the familiar gesture. Carl Johan grinned too and warned, "Don't tell me you don't, _ungstebror_ —I won't believe it."

Christian rolled his eyes. "Oh, all right...I have my moments. But we're talking about you here, not me."

"For the moment, we are," Carl Johan corrected with another grin. "We'll get back to you, never fear. I can remember only one time I ever even came close. There was a very pretty servant girl once...I was about your age, I think. I guess Father took note of my interest in her, because he said he'd picked her out for me to lose my virginity with." He let out a laugh when Christian's mouth fell open in disbelief. "What, you didn't know? That's how I learned about sex, you know. She quit working here after that encounter, which was disappointing for me for a while, but you know how it is—royalty and servants don't have relationships. Sex is one thing, romance another. I eventually forgot about her, but she was the only one till Amalia came along. And it's not as if I was in love with her...probably more in lust. Remember, I was sixteen." He gave Christian a pointed look. "Enough of me—what about you? Whatever happened to that girl you were hanging around with a couple of years ago, at any rate? I always meant to ask but never got a chance."

Christian frowned, as if he had to think back; then his face cleared. "Oh, that's right, Annika Tennholt. Her father's ambassadorship here ended for some reason and she had to return to Sweden." Carl Johan nodded understanding, but remained silent, as if waiting for more. Christian's reluctance was written all over his face, but he finally gave in. "She was someone to go places with...just a friend. You know perfectly well I don't have any of those. It was nice to have that for a while, except that I never went beyond that, and she did. She, well...she tried to get me to do more than just kiss her, but I wasn't ready for that."

"Not at fourteen?" Carl Johan prodded, as if testing him. "You might be aware that's when Arnulf had his first sexual experience."

"Why the hell would I want to emulate Arnulf?" snorted Christian, and Carl Johan laughed aloud. Leslie giggled at Christian's disgusted look. "The thing is, I just didn't have any feelings for Annika beyond friendship. All those girls Father's constantly trying to push at me, or push me at...none of them appeals to me, not a single one. I don't care how pretty their faces are or how perfect their figures are. They're all the same to me. They're all born rich, part of the upper class and the nobility. I...I don't care about that kind of thing. We in this social stratum are expected to keep company with our own kind, but we rarely, if ever, consider love part of the equation. And yet this family is different—I know it from all the stories that have come down through the generations. Grandfather Lukas married for love. Father loves Mother. Arnulf loves Kristina, and you love Amalia. Anna-Laura falls in love every month or so, from the way she carries on. I know it can happen. So—so I want to know..." Christian hesitated, his mouth open; then his face became a study in sheer frustration and he slapped the chair arm with one hand. "Why can't I fall in love? Why can't I even get a stupid teenage crush? Something's wrong with me—I'm sixteen and I've never even had that!" He stared at his brother pleadingly. "Carl Johan, I...I know this probably sounds dumb because I'm still young and all that. But I'm really afraid I'll never be able to fall in love. I...I think I'm too picky. I sort of know what I want in a girlfriend."

"Like what?" asked Carl Johan.

"I...I wish there were a way for me to meet ordinary girls. Middle-class girls. Girls who wouldn't see me as a prince, or even some kind of overly pretty teen idol, but as...as a person. A human being with feelings and dreams and wishes. I don't know about Arnulf and Kristina, but I can tell Amalia sees you that way."

"Christian," Carl Johan said gently, "I know what you're trying to say, but royalty is becoming a scarce commodity in this world, and those of us who are left are all globally famous—even the ones who aren't directly in the spotlight. Mother and Father get all the attention because they're king and queen, and Arnulf gets more than the rest of us because he's Prince Heir...and you and I and Anna-Laura are more obscure, especially outside the country, but that doesn't make us unknowns. You're extremely unlikely to find a girl who doesn't recognize you for being part of the _jordisk_ royal family. And if you're so choosy that you can't fall for just any girl that you have enough in common with, then you're probably going to end up being the family bachelor for the rest of your life."

"Father would absolutely vomit snakes if that happened," said Christian.

Carl Johan laughed again. "True. It's just that what you want is probably impossible. If you truly expected to find a girl who didn't see you for the prince you are, she'd probably have to come from one of those primitive tribes they're supposed to have in the Amazon rain forest. I know one thing...if you do find a girl like that, she's likely to be unique, and you'd be so undeservedly lucky, I'd have to kill you out of pure jealousy."

"Like hell," retorted Christian, grinning. "You've already got Amalia. You don't need to find a girl who sees past the royal façade and the looks and the money."

"Well, there you are—if it can happen to me and even to Arnulf, there's no reason it can't happen to you. I don't think there's anything wrong with you; I just think you've set your standards far too high, and you probably need to lower them, at least a little." He shook his head. "It's hard to believe we're having this discussion now, when you haven't even got your completion certificate yet and your photograph probably decorates the bedroom walls of every teenage girl in this country. Relax, Christian. It'll happen in time. I don't see why you're so worried about it—you never give a damn what Father says otherwise."

"I still don't. I just want him to stop throwing me at every likely-looking girl he sees," Christian said irritably, and his brother laughed again. "Well, all right...I'll let it drop for the time being. I guess you have a point about it being pretty early in my life for me to worry about that. Look...do me a favor and don't tell Father. If he finds out what I said to you in here, he'll only redouble his efforts and make me even crazier."

Carl Johan nodded. "Of course, your secret's safe with me. Just give yourself a chance, Christian...and give some of those girls a chance too, huh? Otherwise you'll never find out what kind of girl you could fall in love with."

Christian absorbed that with a thoughtful look, then nodded and arose. "Okay, then, thanks, _äldrebror_. I'll let you join Amalia. Good night."

"If Mother asks, do I keep it secret from her too?" Carl Johan kidded. Christian seized a throw pillow from an unoccupied chair and pitched it at him, and he caught it; both of them laughed and exchanged goodnights once more.

Just as Leslie arose to follow Christian out, the room blinked out as if all the lights had been shut off, and then that familiar door popped into view in front of her. She let herself out and spied her present-day husband in a chair, slouched in much the same position as his sixteen-year-old self had been moments before, his eyes closed and a slight frown creasing his still-beautiful features. "Are you all right, my love?"

Christian's eyes popped open and he sat up, then smiled ruefully at her. "Your last memory certainly gave me something to think about," he said. "But we can come back to that if you like. What did you think of mine?"

"It kind of amazed me that you were worried about not being able to fall in love as early as when you were only sixteen," Leslie admitted.

Christian shrugged and said, "I think even at the time, I was pretty surprised myself. But I'd already endured a couple of years of Father shoving me at girls, and always the sort of girls he thought would be suitable for a prince. Sometime after Arnulf dropped that revelation on me that Father made me marry Johanna because he was afraid I was gay, I began to wonder when Father first entertained that idea. I suppose I'll never know."

"Hmm...well, it was quite a talk, anyway. It gave me a good sense of how close a relationship you and Carl Johan had when you were growing up. Maybe in some ways it's better to have a sibling that much older or younger than you, because you can relate to each other in a different way. I wasn't like that with Kristy and Kelly just because we were only two years apart."

"Not that Kristy at least didn't seem to look up to you, from what I've seen in at least one of your memories. Which brings me around to this one. _Herregud,_ my Rose...was that truly Michael Hamilton? He bore you and your sisters no resemblance at all. Not in facial features, not in build, nothing. It was as if he had no hand at all in your creation."

"Something for which I've been eternally grateful for years," Leslie assured him wryly. "I knew it from an early age, and I sometimes let myself daydream that he wasn't the guy who got Mom pregnant with us and our real father was out there somewhere just waiting for us to find him. But yup, that was Michael. He smoked for a lot of years—that's why he looked like that. He quit when I was around eleven, but that just seemed to make him even meaner, as if the nicotine had been some kind of mellowing influence on him or something. If he hadn't died in his own firetrap, cancer probably would've got him sooner or later."

Christian shook his head and regarded her with some wonder, slowly getting to his feet. "I could hardly believe it when you twitted him with that wisecrack about remembering how old you were. I truly thought he'd break some of your bones for a few seconds."

"Mom's probably the only reason we got away with the occasional shot across his bow. You saw what she did when he threatened me. So what else did you see?"

"That shabby little spun-sugar room you lived in," said Christian with a half-smile. "After your mother and sisters came out with party things, I had to know, and I went in and up to your room and watched you put away clothes. I still remember your telling me once that you needed to have everything in its proper place. You've always been like that, haven't you? Your room was immaculate, especially compared to the twins'."

Leslie grinned. "Did you see all Kristy's unicorn drawings?" At his nod, they both laughed. "Yeah, I guess I always have. So you got a good sense of the layout of our house. What was the last thing you saw?"

"You and your mother at the table, with her promising you that your fourteenth birthday would be much better than your thirteenth. You looked confused, but I knew instantly that she wasn't just making a vow, she was predicting the future."

"Yeah," Leslie murmured, "she was. You're right. For some reason I never realized that till you pointed it out, but that's exactly what she was doing. At the time I just thought she was promising me she'd find a way to make it better, even if she had to go way out of her way to do it. But she knew it was because I'd be here with Father and Tattoo."

"You may not realize it, my Leslie Rose, but you're braver and stronger than you know. Whatever we do in the next few months, you're going to be just fine."

She nestled into his embrace. "I know I will, because I have you." He hugged her, and they were still standing that way when Roarke looked in on them.

"Food for thought?" he inquired, his tone gentle.

They looked around, caught his eye, looked at each other, and nodded almost in perfect synch. Roarke smiled at that, then gave them a signal to follow him out; they did, both thinking back over the past three days, wondering what the final foray into memory would bring them.


	8. Chapter 8

§ § § - October 9, 2009

It was their last time for this, and they both knew it; it made them feel a bit bereft, as though they knew they would never have this chance again. Roarke didn't seem to notice their shared downcast mien. "This time, as we arranged, you will be seeing the memories in each other's company," he explained. "That means you must decide which one comes first."

"It doesn't matter to me," Christian said.

"Then let's see yours first," Leslie said, and he smiled a little, nodding.

Roarke finally took note of their subdued aura. "I would have thought you two would be much more excited about this," he said quizzically.

"It's because these are the last ones," Leslie told him. "It's been so amazing, getting to peek into each other's pasts like this. I wish we could keep doing it."

"I admit, I wish for the same indulgence," Christian agreed. "I know you aren't prepared to continue, and it would be thoroughly rude of us to ask for more when you've already given us this incredibly generous gift. But you'll have to excuse us if we stretch these memories out for as long as we possibly can. Although that may take some doing on my part." His smile was rueful. "I chose one that stands out as little more than a few quick snapshots in my head, because I was so young at the time—only three. You'll get to meet Grandfather Lukas, my Rose."

Leslie brightened with surprise as Roarke offered, "I suspected you two would try to take the opportunities to introduce each other to someone you could never have known otherwise. Thus, I made certain you will see not just the conscious recollection, but the parts that have remained dormant in your subconscious minds since these events took place. Not only will you see each other's memories, but your own will be enhanced by these visits."

Leslie stared at him; Christian looked shocked, but there was a light glowing in his hazel eyes. "Will these...enhancements stay with us forever?"

"If you wish them to, they will," said Roarke. "Whenever you two are ready, you have only to go through the door." This time, they noticed, there was only one door before them.

Christian drew in a breath and flattened a hand over his lower abdomen, his face filled with wonder. "I can't believe it—I'm nervous."

"That's anticipation you feel, Christian," Roarke told him with a smile. "Feel free to narrate whatever you can recall for Leslie. Just enjoy the experience."

The light in Christian's eyes gave him the eager look of a little boy, endearing him that much more to Leslie. He gave her a childlike grin and urged, "Then let's not wait another second. Come with me, my Rose."

§ § § - November 30, 1961

"We should've worn coats," Leslie said, shivering a little. "It's the dead of winter." They stood in a spot that was familiar to her: the outdoor staircase leading to the courtyard behind the great entry, at the top of the steps, looking down at where an older man and three young children were romping through what was already a substantial layer of snow on the ground.

"I suppose we should at that," Christian admitted, "but I'm afraid I was too excited to think of that. Well, I can stand it if you can, and I'll try to keep you warm. Come with me, and try to guess who's down here." He grinned at her, wrapped an arm around her and made his way down the steps, which had been swept clean of snow.

"This reminds me of my childhood," Leslie remarked with a chuckle as they stepped off the last stone tread. To their amazement, they were able to walk through shin-deep snow without effort and without leaving tracks or any other trace of their presence, as if they were a pair of ghosts. "Oh, this is too much. Cold, but not covered with snow the way we would be in life."

"Your father and those powers of his," Christian said, grinning. "Well, here." He took her hand and led her closer to the group playing nearby. "You should be able to identify all these characters, I believe."

He wasn't surprised when her eyes landed on the more mismatched of the two pairs. "Oh, my love, look at you—you were so adorable!" she exclaimed, pulling him even closer to get a better look at the irresistible three-year-old boy throwing handfuls of snow crystals in the air. Wisps of dark hair peeked out from beneath a blue woolen cap with a huge yellow pompom on the top; the child's navy-blue coat was frosted with the snow he'd managed to shower himself with. Little Christian was chortling in pure delight, but it was just as clear that the older man kneeling in front of him was every bit as delighted just watching the little boy playing. Leslie turned to Christian to say something, but was arrested at the sight of her husband's face, his eyes glued to the grandfather he could barely remember anymore. Even as she watched, a sheen of moisture gathered in Christian's eyes. _"Farfar,"_ he breathed, as though unaware he spoke. He sank to his own knees a few feet away, staring and staring, as though doing his utmost to reinforce the nearly vanished recollection from which this scenario had been drawn.

Leslie crouched by Christian's side. "Christian, my love..." she began.

He blinked, as if he'd forgotten she was there, and smiled at her. "My Rose, meet my grandfather, King Lukas VI."

Leslie studied the man and realized he was a handsomer version of Ulf; he had an elegant mustache but no beard, and his laughing blue eyes were warm and sparkling. He had a relaxed, welcoming, contented air about him; this was the face of a man who felt he had everything that truly mattered in life. As she and Christian watched, Lukas addressed the little boy. "Here, Christian, let's learn to make snow angels."

"What's a snow angel?" the child asked, wide-eyed. They turned to look at him; he was still being coated with the last of the snowflakes he'd tossed into the air, and Leslie thought he looked like an exquisite little figurine inside a snow globe.

"Let me show you," Lukas said, rising—and then falling backwards into the snow, arms and legs spread wide. The little boy gaped; his grown-up self gasped and shot to his feet with a reflexive cry of protest.

"Grandfather, _herregud,_ you could have hurt yourself!" he exclaimed, aghast.

"He didn't, my love," Leslie said, giggling; Lukas' sheer joy was contagious. "Look at him! He must have absolutely loved living! How old was he?"

Christian had to calculate. "Hmm...I was three here...this was probably late in 1961. I'm told we had a very early start to winter that year, and this snow looks fairly fresh. So Grandfather would have been sixty-seven."

"He was a kid at heart," Leslie speculated, watching Lukas laughingly sweep his arms and legs back and forth in the snow. "What an amazing man he must've been."

"I want to do that!" shouted three-year-old Christian, and his adult self and Leslie watched, both laughing helplessly, as the little boy leaped backward and landed flat on his rear end in the snow. Nothing daunted, the child flopped onto his back and began waving his arms and legs with enough energy to send snow flying.

They were joined then by the other two children: Carl Johan, eleven, and Anna-Laura, eight years old. "What's he doing?" Anna-Laura asked, staring at young Christian, as Carl Johan plowed through the snow and gave their grandfather a hand in getting back to his feet. Lukas caught sight of the little boy and laughed.

"That's his idea of a snow angel. Not so hard, Christian," Lukas instructed. "Take it slow and easy. Come here and let's start another one." He pulled the boy to his feet, moved him to a fresh patch of snow and helped him lie down, then instructed him while the child flapped his arms and legs in slower, more sweeping motions. "Yes, that's better."

"Is it a good one?" young Christian asked, sitting up.

"Let's see," Lukas suggested and took his hands, lifting him right into the air and set-ting him back on his feet beside him so they could both study the snow angel. "Ah, yes, you did perfectly! You make very good snow angels, Christian!"

"But can he make good snowmen?" Anna-Laura asked, grinning at her small brother.

"Or good snowballs?" added Carl Johan, packing one as he spoke. "When you have a lot of snow like this, Christian, you have to have a good snow fight."

"He's right," said Lukas conspiratorially. "Here's how to make a good snowball." He proceeded to show the little boy; Leslie, entranced, had a delighted smile on her face, while Christian had pressed one hand against his mouth, his eyes sparkling with tears and amusement at the same time.

They lingered for a good fifteen minutes, neither of them noticing when they began to shiver, watching as a playful snowball fight developed before Lukas corralled the children to assist him in building a snowman. The adult Christian trailed helplessly after his grandfather, taking in the man's face, speech, mannerisms, expressions, everything. Leslie found her attention divided about equally between her husband and his grandfather, thinking what a rotten shame it was that amakarna had taken Lukas before he'd had time to build more than a few fraying old memories with his youngest grandchild. She studied the way Christian stayed glued to Lukas' side, amazed that despite the dearth of actual memories he had of him, he still felt a connection to him.

Finally, having completed their snowman, Lukas lifted little Christian into his arms and patted the child's back. "Best we go inside; you're starting to shiver, my boy," he said with a smile. "But did you have fun?"

Little Christian nodded eagerly. "Let's do it again tomorrow, _farfar!"_

"We just might do that," Lukas said, chuckling. "For now, let's see if the kitchen staff has something hot for us to drink, and maybe there'll be a good old-fashioned fire in the sitting-room fireplace." The group headed for the stairs that led to the great entry; Leslie and Christian plodded along behind, with Christian clearly very reluctant to let go of the moment as long as he could hold onto it.

"Did we have hot cocoa?" murmured Christian aloud. "I wish I knew..." And at that point, only halfway up the stone steps, the whole vision dissolved around them and he stopped short with a gasp of protest. "But I wasn't ready yet..."

Leslie understood his wish to prolong the memory, but she had a feeling that whatever had taken place thereafter had escaped even his subconscious and was therefore irretrievable. "Think about it, my love," she coaxed softly, "you had a chance to relive the memory and enhance it. That all by itself is a privilege."

Christian closed his eyes and let his head droop. "You're right," he murmured. "Yet I still find myself wishing..."

"You must have been incredibly close to your grandfather," Leslie mused, rubbing his back as they stood in a featureless gray expanse with a door seemingly floating in front of them. "So close that the bond stuck with you even after most of your memories of him disappeared and you had to strain to hold onto the ones that were left."

"I'll never quite know how or why, but perhaps it was because he would have been the father figure I didn't have growing up," Christian admitted. "At least you had the chance to see him as I remember him..." He smiled wryly. "As I _almost_ remember him, anyway."

"I'm glad I did," she said softly, and his smile warmed as he pulled her in for a hug. At last they let themselves back into the time-travel room, where Roarke still waited for them, sitting in the chair in the corner.

"I trust it was an enjoyable experience?" he inquired.

"I think I'm less likely to forget this memory, now that you've enhanced it and allowed me to relive it," Christian told him in a soft, grateful voice. "Mere thanks hardly seem adequate for this particular gift."

"You are very welcome, Christian," said Roarke. He let a few seconds elapse before taking in both of them and smiling. "Now, are you ready for your last journey? Leslie, why don't you tell Christian what memory you're escorting him through."

Christian laughed. "I had nearly forgotten, I was so caught up in my own thought. I'm sorry, my Rose—what will you show me?"

"I've talked about this before: helping _mormor_ move into my room when I was seven. I mentioned how I had to share with Kristy and Kelly for the next year, till the fire happened. Now you get to see what I remember about helping to get her settled in."

Christian smiled. "Then by all means, let's see it."


	9. Chapter 9

§ § § - July 15, 1972

 _"Herregud,_ but this room is small," Christian blurted when they had closed the door behind them. "Strange—I don't recall it being quite so cramped when your grandmother's friend gave us that tour, back when I was hiring for my Boston branch."

"We saw the rebuilt section," Leslie explained. "This is the original bedroom wing of the house—and yes, I did have a tiny room, but at least it was mine. I think I put up a bit of a stink about having to move in with Kristy and Kelly, but when I got a little older, I asked Mom why _mormor_ had moved in with us in the first place. She told me the landlord raised the rent on _mormor_ 's apartment beyond her ability to afford it, so she came to live with us."

"Seems landlords enjoy doing things like that," Christian remarked wryly, surveying the little room. His gaze stopped on the elderly woman and the little girl sitting close together on the brass-framed twin bed. "You were seven here, you said?"

Leslie nodded, taking his hand and drifting forward to get a closer look. "I'd kind of forgotten that old brass bed. I never saw her sleep in anything else. Here, Christian, come and meet my _mormor_...Ingunna Hansson Reed."

A box sat at Ingunna's and young Leslie's feet, and as the two visitors watched, the little girl reached in and withdrew a glossy brochure. "You went to a lot of places, _mormor,"_ commented seven-year-old Leslie, her long straight ponytails—fastened directly over each ear—dangling nearly into the child's eyes as she leaned down to pick up the brochure. "Sas...Sacks...what's that say?"

"Saskatchewan," said Ingunna, the long Canadian name distorted to some extent by her soft, musical Swedish accent. "It's a part of Canada. Here in America, you have states; in Canada, they have provinces, and that's what Saskatchewan is."

"That's a funny name," commented young Leslie, setting the brochure aside and pulling out another. "Wow, this one's really old."

Ingunna smiled, putting even more lines in her soft, wrinkled features. "Yes, I have had it since I was no older than you are, _min lilla."_ At this Christian tossed Leslie a surprised look, and Leslie grinned at him, nodding.

"That's what she called me," she told her husband. "Not too different from your expression _'lillan min'."_

"I wonder that she didn't teach you some of the language," he teased, and she laughed.

 _"Lilla,"_ young Leslie repeated. "That's the same word on this." Her observation drew Christian's and Leslie's attention; they both looked closer at the pamphlet advertising Lilla Jordsö, circa 1920, and Christian sucked in a breath before staring accusingly at his wife.

"You never said she had a brochure," he informed her with mock indignation.

"Ha," Leslie shot back. "I'd forgotten about it. Anyway, it wasn't with the things in her shoebox...it must have been destroyed in the fire."

Christian sobered at that and smoothed her hair, watching Ingunna and his wife's younger self poring over the brochure. "It's a shame. It would have been fascinating to look at." He knelt enough to get a look at it himself, with Leslie following suit, and they grinned at the assorted black-and-white photos—the castle, a formal portrait of a monarch and his queen, streetcars running along a boulevard in Sundborg. "How interesting. That portrait is of my great-great grandfather, Carl IV. She must have obtained that brochure well before she visited Lilla Jordsö."

"That'd make sense, since she was probably there for your great-grandfather's coronation. Remember the photo she took with King Erik and Queen Agneta, and your grandparents, and your father as a little boy? She wrote on the back that it was taken three days after Erik's coronation, so naturally the brochure would've predated that."

"That's right, I had forgotten about that." He watched as Ingunna took the pamphlet from her granddaughter and carefully closed it up, setting it aside. "What a shame that was lost. It might have been worth a little money. And even if it wasn't, it would have been a wonderful piece of history."

"I wouldn't mind seeing it again myself," Leslie confessed wistfully.

They fell silent while young Leslie delved into the box for more travel brochures, for places all over North America—California, Ontario, St. Louis, New York City. Then the child came up with a color-splashed foldout that had begun to turn yellow with age, much like most of the others. The little girl squinted at it as Ingunna gazed distantly at the wall, as if reliving memories; her puzzled voice seemed to startle the elderly lady. "Fantasy Island," young Leslie read aloud. _"Mormor,_ what's this?"

Ingunna blinked, turned back to the child and looked over the foldout in her hands, while the adult Leslie stared at the scene with her eyes fixed on her grandmother, her lips silently mouthing the words along with her, to Christian's amused bewilderment. "Oh yes." Ingunna's smile was dreamy. "The most wonderful place in the world, _söta lilla._ It's magical."

The seven-year-old's eyes went wide, and she stared up at Ingunna with the wonder of a child being told about Disneyland. "Real magic, _mormor?_ Like fairies and unicorns and flying carpets?"

"Exactly so," Ingunna assured her. "The flowers have special magic in them. Unicorns and mermaids can be seen there." At this, young Leslie gasped, and somehow her eyes got even bigger. "Even the dirt is magical. Everyone wants to go to Fantasy Island, because that's where your dearest dream can come true. Mr. Roarke is the man who owns the island. The only thing he cannot do is bring people back to life...but he has amazing powers, and he is no ordinary man."

"What kind of powers?" young Leslie persisted.

Christian, this time, was watching his wife, whose expression was that of one who expects to lose a loved one very soon; he slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her close, and she came, though she never took her eyes off her grandmother. Ingunna spoke slowly, as if she were trying to remember. "They say he can make a blind person see again, a deaf person hear again...and one with...with _förlamning_ walk again." Ingunna shook her head when the little girl screwed up her face. "I'm sorry, _min lilla,_ I don't remember the English word. But yes, he can do that, and many other things."

"Paralysis," Christian said when his wife turned to him. "Our word is almost identical to that— _forlamming."_

"Mind-reader—I was about to ask you. Sometimes _mormor_ had trouble with the bigger English words, so there were times I didn't get everything she said."

He nodded, and they shifted their attention back to Ingunna and young Leslie, who was still staring up at her grandmother. "If I wanted to fly, could he do that? If I wanted to pretend I was a famous movie star, could he do that?"

"Yes, he could. That's why people go to his island, you see. He makes their strangest dreams come true—their fantasies that could never happen otherwise, you see? This is why his island is called Fantasy Island. Perhaps one day when you are grown, you will go." She smiled at Leslie and stroked two fingers, scissor-style, down one of the girl's ponytails.

"When I'm grown?" adult Leslie echoed and shook her head. "Oh, _mormor_ , you knew all the time, and you never even hinted." She looked up at Christian. "I'd forgotten that too. _Mormor_ obviously was a better actress than Mom." Christian chuckled.

"If I get to go," young Leslie said then, "I want to go with you. Then we can both have a fantasy be real." She laid the brochure aside with care. "We should save that so we don't forget that we want to take a trip there together." At that Ingunna laughed and gave the girl a quick squeeze—and just like that, the whole scene disappeared.

"Oh, damn," Leslie muttered, voice thick. "I wasn't ready either."

Christian pulled her into a full hug and mused, "It's funny, listening to your grandmother speaking reminded me of when Mr. Roarke brought my parents back, when the triplets were two. Mother's accent was the same. I suspect it would have been so in life as well, if her English had been better, but she didn't learn it very well in school and always had some difficulty with it. I'm sorry this memory was so much shorter than mine with _farfar_ , but I had a chance at least to get a glimpse of your grandmother, and that's certainly more than I could ever have expected otherwise."

She nodded, but he recognized her pensive look when she met his gaze, for they both had the same letdown feeling. "I wish we could keep doing this," she murmured.

"It's best that we not ask," Christian said with a little grin. "We'll only look like a pair of spoiled brats, after the indescribable generosity of this gift from your father. Let's be grateful that we had these chances. And I truly am, for somehow I feel as though I understand you better, with these glimpses into your life that gave me some insight on what made you the woman you are now."

"I feel the same way," Leslie agreed, nodding. "And all this has made me love you more than ever, too. I still feel so lucky that I was the one you wanted." She gazed up at him. "Thank you for loving me, for showing me that it was more than worth taking the chance of falling for you and marrying you. You've made my life so rich and full. If we...if we make the decision I think we're going to make, that's what will sustain me."

Christian kissed her. "Thank you for your heart, my Leslie Rose, and for all you've given me since we met. Now...come on, I think it's time we have a talk with Mr. Roarke."

* * *

 _Decisions, decisions...all will be revealed in future stories, I promise!_


End file.
